


Higher Learning

by shes_gone



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Emotional Constipation, Frottage, M/M, Manpain, Stanford Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-21
Updated: 2009-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:58:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shes_gone/pseuds/shes_gone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam's old Stanford buddy unexpectedly calls in a favor, the Winchester brothers find themselves tested in more ways than one. (Collab with <span class="ljuser i-ljuser"></span><a href="http://peccatrixjusta.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://peccatrixjusta.livejournal.com/"><b>peccatrixjusta</b></a> and <span class="ljuser i-ljuser"></span><a href="http://reallycorking.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://reallycorking.livejournal.com/"></a><b>reallycorking</b>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Higher Learning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2009 [](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_j2_bigbang**](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/). This is [](http://peccatrixjusta.livejournal.com/profile)[**peccatrixjusta**](http://peccatrixjusta.livejournal.com/)'s and my first collab, and what a great time we had writing together! Huge, endless thanks to [](http://reallycorking.livejournal.com/profile)[**reallycorking**](http://reallycorking.livejournal.com/) for her ridiculously gorgeous art, and to both her and [](http://cmere.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://cmere.livejournal.com/)**cmere** for the betas, helpful feedback, and obligatory hand-holding. ♥.

Dean was ready to get the hell out of Ohio. More fucked-up shit happened in Ohio than anyone gave the state credit for, and he had seen enough to last him the next two or three years, at least.

"Sam, would you hurry up?" he barked, standing in the half-open door of the motel room. "I swear, it's like traveling with a woman."

Sam emerged from the bathroom, rolling his eyes. "Sorry," he said, as he grabbed his duffel and stuffed his damp shirt inside, "but cursed blood is a bitch to get out if it dries, and that's my favorite shirt."

"God, you're an embarrassment."

"And besides, Dean, what would you know about it? The farthest you've ever traveled with a woman was from the bar back to the motel."

"And even that's too far, most of the time, Sammy. Now shake a leg, and if you're lucky, I won't leave without you."

"Yeah, thanks."

"Oh, and Sam?"

"What?"

"Where are we going, again?"

Sam groaned. "Dean."

"Oh, wait, right— _Punxsutawney_."

"Dean, I swear to _God_ —" He looked for something to throw, but the door slammed shut as Dean darted out into the parking lot.

Bobby had called that morning, both to check on their progress in Akron and to see if they'd be available to swing into western Pennsylvania after they'd finished. There was a hunt in Punxsutawney, most likely a witches' circle, from what Bobby had heard.

Dean was never happy with a witch hunt, but this one was made much more pleasant by how much fun it was to say 'Punxsutawney,' which Dean thought he might never get tired of doing. Sam, shockingly, was being a total bitch about it.

"C'mon, Sammy, you gotta love the way it rolls off the tongue," Dean said as they pulled away from the motel. "Punxsu- _tawney_." Sam just gave him an exasperated look. "And don't lie, I know you're excited to go there. You love that groundhog, man."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"What were you, like, thirteen? You wouldn't shut up about him for an entire February."

"Well, I was upset. It's blatant animal cruelty."

"Whatever, that groundhog probably lives better than we do."

"Everyone lives better than we do, Dean."

"Aw, c'mon, Sammy. You gotta loosen up. Try saying it a few times, it'll cheer you up."

"Shut up."

"Just once, c'mon. Try it."

"No."

"Say it."

"No!"

"Say it!"

"Dean!"

"Sam!"

"God, fine! _Punxsutawney_! Will you stop now?"

Dean threw him a sideways glance. "One more time."

Sam gave a long-suffering sigh. "Punxsutawney," he said resignedly, but the corners of his mouth twitched in a very satisfying way.

"Told you, bitch," Dean said, and he grinned as he cranked up the radio.

They'd barely made it into Pennsylvania when Sam's phone rang, buzzing earnestly against the leather seat where it had fallen out of his pocket. Sam checked the caller ID and frowned before he answered, not recognizing the number.

"Hello? Yeah, this is Sam. Sorry, who? Shaheen?" Sam said, and Dean glanced over at the surprise in his voice. "Oh my God, hi!" Dean raised his eyebrows. "I—wow. How are you, man? How'd you get this number?"

Dean frowned and looked back at the stretch of I-80 in front of him.

Ten minutes and one very suspicious sounding half of a conversation later, Sam hung up.

"Who the hell was that?" Dean asked, though he was pretty sure he already knew.

"Shaheen," Sam said, staring at his phone. "Friend from Stanford."

Dean nodded. "I didn't realize you kept in touch."

"I don't. I mean, I haven't. That was pretty much the last phone call I expected to get."

"So how'd he get your number?"

"Becky," Sam said, stiffening, and Dean gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter.

"Becky? Who the hell is _that_?"

"St. Louis?" Sam said, impatiently.

"Oh, right." Dean felt his jaw clench. "Wait, Becky still has your number? You've changed it like _six_ times since we were in St. Louis, Sam."

Sam shrugged, and pointedly stared at the windshield. Dean stared at him, watching his jaw and neck tense a moment before looking back to the road with an aggravated sigh. "Well that's just great. So, how much did Becky tell this… Seamus guy?"

"Shaheen."

"Shaheen, right. How much did she spill?"

"She didn't _spill_ anything, Dean. They were hanging out a couple weeks ago, and Shaheen told her about some weird shit that's been going on near his new place—sounds like a spirit, by the way—and she very vaguely suggested that he call me. And she gave him my new number."

"And now you want to go say hi."

"And waste the spirit, yeah. I do."

Dean glared at the highway. "Is this spirit in California?"

"Boston, actually."

"Massachusetts?"

"Last I checked, yeah."

Dean frowned. He still got irrationally nervous every time he and Sam had to go near California, but Massachusetts? _Sucked._ "What's this friend of yours doing in Boston?"

"Law school," Sam said flatly.

Dean needed a moment before he was ready to laugh thatone off. "Let me guess, he's at _Harvard_ , right?"

"Yup," Sam said, still staring out the window.

"Dude, I was kidding," Dean said, glancing at Sam. "Christ, the crowd you ran with, man. I bet Little Miss Becky's a Harvard law student now, too?"

"No," Sam sighed. "She went back to St. Louis after she graduated. She's in marketing for some beer company, I think."

"Dude, you have a friend who works for a brewery? Shit man, forget Boston, we gotta go back to St. Louis."

Sam ignored him.

"OK, so wait," Dean said, after a moment, "if Becky's in Missouri, then how—I thought you said she and this friend of yours were just hanging out."

Sam shifted in his seat and turned back to the window. "Another friend of ours from school just got married. They both went back to California for the wedding."

Dean paused. "I take it you weren't invited?"

"Would it have mattered if I had been?" Sam said coolly.

Exit 78, Highway 36 into Punxsutawney appeared on a green highway sign, but Dean pressed on up the interstate with a sigh. "You sure you wouldn't rather go liberate that groundhog?"

"We'll do it on the way back," Sam said, with just enough _thank you_ in his voice to make Dean uncomfortable.

"You've heard about how they drive in Boston, right? If one of those douchebags fucks up my car, Sam, I swear to God."

"I'll take full responsibility."

"Damn straight you will." Dean sighed. "So, how much did Shaquille tell you about this spirit?"

" _Shaheen_."

"Shaheen, right. What kind of name is that, anyway?"

"Indian."

"Right on," Dean said. "Dots or feathers?"

"Oh my _God_ , Dean," Sam said, thoroughly scandalized, and Dean grinned.

-=-=-=-=-=-

There were some unexplainable mysteries in the world. The persistence of evil despite the efforts of good people. The thin membrane between the living and the dead. The fact that they were once again, completely inexplicably, back on Plummer Street.

"God _damn_ it!"

Dean didn't actually shout; his curse fought its way out through clenched teeth in that too controlled way that indicated he was _really_ mad. Sam couldn't help but think of Dad, but the reminder didn't make him feel pissed off and defensive as it might have, at one time. Instead he just felt vaguely sad. Perhaps weirdly nostalgic? Sam gazed at the red-brick, ivy-laurelled buildings that lined the narrow street, thinking of Dad and Dean and…

"Sammy! Focus! We need to find our way of out of here. I can't see anything. This is like being in a fucking Lego town built by a deranged three-year-old."

Sam returned to the task at hand. Dean's analogy actually fit pretty well. They had been driving for an hour—literally, _an hour_ —around the tight little knot of streets and buildings known as Harvard Square. They had gathered, so far, that the big fenced-in campus was Harvard. But the university seemed to spill out uncontrollably into the business district, as did all the students. Or _freaking eggheads_ as Dean called them. There were people everywhere, more people packed into this tiny section of city than populated most of the rural Midwest combined.

As far as Dean was concerned, this was hostile country—more inhospitable to life than any rundown bus depot or dying town. This was because the Impala was not built for places like Harvard Square. There was no room here for her broad elegance; she negotiated the one-way streets like a battleship easing its way down a country creek—that is, awkwardly. Dean actually gasped—a genuine exclamation of suspense and terror—when a crazy cyclist with dreadlocks and a messenger bag zipped past and nearly clipped his sweetheart's bumper.

"Dean, we just have to leave her somewhere. C'mon, just pull over," Sam suggested for the millionth time, no real enthusiasm in his voice.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Sam! Have you been paying attention at all? Look at the signs! Restricted parking! Residential parking only! And what's with all these meters?… I don't know about you, Sammy, but I'm not going to leave in the middle of the goddamn hunt to go feed the frickin' meter."

Sam would have suggested that they just risk a ticket. But Dean was adamant that the Impala couldn't be towed. He darkly referred to an incident during their one previous visit to Boston, when the car got impounded and Dad, well. "Dad was ready to pound something in return," Dean said.

Sam didn't push the matter. Things felt too charged between him and Dean already. Dean would never admit it, but Sam could tell that his brother was more than a little shocked that one of Sam's old Stanford buddies had made contact. Dean liked to think of that period of Sam's life as sealed-off and inaccessible, so that neither of them ever had to deal with it again.

So Dean didn't want to be here. Sam knew they were here because he himself wanted it, and because at the end of the day, Dean was incapable of refusing Sam. It worked when they were kids, floating around another crappy rental apartment while Dad was off fighting evil. And it worked now—this mysterious, undeniable _power_ that Sam had over Dean. Sam didn't know whether to love Dean or hate him for it.

And maybe that was an example of Dean's power over him.

Sam squirmed in his seat. He was ready to get out of this car, out into the unseasonably balmy New England fall air. They somehow emerged from the tiny streets for tiny cars, and turned right onto a drive that ran along the river separating Boston from Cambridge. The road was a little wider and faster moving. He could feel both their bodies relax slightly at the mild breeze coming through the windows.

It was Sam who spotted the parking space—Dean was concentrating way too hard on protecting the Impala from Massachusetts drivers.

"Dean, look!" It was the first space they'd seen that they could simply pull right into, sparing everybody the ego- and bumper-bruising ordeal of parallel parking.

Dean eased her in, turned her off; the car had stopped moving but the world continued to zoom past, cars zipping, the sun reflecting off the river. They sat there, quiet for a second.

"Look, Dean," Sam finally spoke up, sounding way too much like an overly enthusiastic elementary school teacher. "No parking restrictions anywhere! The sign just says 'Snow Emergency Route.' I've heard about New England weather, but I don't think we're in for a blizzard tonight. She should be all right here."

Dean just glowered, looking out the driver's side window to the Harvard crew team rowing by in their long boats. Sam didn't need to be psychic to know what Dean was making of _that_ sight. There was something sort of poignant about the whole thing—Dean didn't trust the Impala would be safe, alone and undefended on the mean streets of… Harvard University.

Jesus Christ.

Sam looked out his own window, and saw they were parked alongside some sort of stone church. He gazed at the cross carved above the door, at the bronze sign welcoming all people to the monastery. It seemed like a nice, quiet place. He half-believed he could hear liturgical chant floating out from behind the wooden door.

"Dean," he said, half smiling, "see there? This is hallowed ground."

Dean raised an eyebrow—truly, his most expressive feature—and took in the scene. To Sam's surprise, he appeared totally satisfied, for the first time all day, throwing open the door and hauling himself out of the car.

Dean leaned down through the car window, putting his arms on the ledge. He blocked out Sam's view of the river, the sunrays on the water, everything.

"Hey princess, you going to wait around all day, or should we go rescue your pal She-Ra from this evil spirit?"

-=-=-=-=-=- 

"Sam, what the hell is this?"

"What?" Sam asked, without looking away from door.

"This _food_ , Sam."

Sam glanced at him, and down at his own menu, resting on the table. "What's wrong with it?"

"I thought this was a _pub_. Didn't it say 'pub' out front?" Sam merely raised his eyebrows. Dean sighed and turned his menu so that Sam could see it. "A hummus plate, Sam?" he said, pointing to an item near the top. "What the hell kind of 'pub' serves a _hummus plate_? Chutney, tabouli, quinoa? I don't even know what half this shit _is_."

"Yeah, that's because it's good for you, Dean. I know that's terrifying." Dean glared at him. "I'm sure they can make you a burger, if you absolutely need one."

"Dude, the only burger they've got listed on here is made with something called 'tempeh', and I don't have to know what that is to know that it's wrong. And the beer on tap? Is _organic_. You're honestly friends with the dude that recommended this place?"

Sam shrugged.

"Winchester!" a voice near the front of the not-pub called. Dean looked up, and Sam was up from his seat before Dean could pick out the voice from the crowd. "You bastard," a short, dark-skinned guy said as Sam approached him and, to Dean's surprise, enveloped him in a hug. Dean could barely see the kid as Sam towered over him, his broad shoulders blocking him almost completely.

Dean stood when Sam turned to introduce them, and shook Shaheen's hand with a smile. Shaheen wasn't what Dean had been expecting, but he hadn't known what to expect, really, when his vision of Sam's friends from Stanford consisted entirely of Jess and Becky, and everything he knew about Harvard law students came from one (very much secret) viewing of _Legally Blonde_. Dean took Shaheen in—his faux-vintage Dave Matthews t-shirt and baggy brown shorts, the black messenger bag littered with various political pins, the sunglasses pushed up into his hair, the top of which was scarcely as high as Sam's shoulders—and had to suppress a laugh at the mental image of the two of them, hunkered down together in the library, Sam towering over a stack of books, and Shaheen's feet dangling from the chair next to him.

"So Shaheen," Dean said, after they'd settled back into their seats, "what's good here?" He gestured to his menu.

"They've got a wicked hummus plate," Shaheen said.

Dean gave a tight smile. "What if you're not really a hummus kind of guy?"

"The chili's top notch."

"The _vegan_ chili, you mean?" Dean asked, and Sam stifled a grin behind his hand.

"Seriously, it's delicious, and totally satisfying. You would never know it was meatless."

"Awesome," Dean said, unconvinced. The waitress appeared a moment later, and Dean hadn't found anything that sounded more promising, so he ordered the chili with an unhappy sigh.

"And can I get two beers with that, please? I'm going to need all the help I can get." The waitress raised an eyebrow but jotted down his order.

"So, hey," Shaheen said, mostly to Sam, "thanks for coming. I was beginning to think I'd never see you again, man."

"Never say never," Sam said, with a sheepish grin.

"What have you been doing?" Shaheen asked. "I mean, did you finish school?"

"No," Sam said, looking uncomfortable. "Not yet, anyway." Dean tried not to flinch. "I've been, well, _we've_ been busy."

"So I hear," Shaheen said, his eyes darting over to Dean. "Well, it's never too late. You still thinking about law school?"

"So, Shaheen, I hear you've been seeing ghosts?" Dean said, with a bit more bite than was probably necessary.

Shaheen blushed and looked worriedly at the nearby tables. "I'm not—I don't know, I mean," he stammered.

"It's OK, man," Sam said, glaring at Dean. "Just tell us what's been going on. We hear a lot of crazy stuff, so, don't worry about what it sounds like."

Shaheen glanced at Sam warily. "Yeah?" Sam nodded, and Dean did his best to emulate Sam's open, trustworthy expression when Shaheen looked back at him.

"Well, like I said on the phone, there's this, well. I don't know what, but there's something going on up the street. There's this intersection. And it's, well..."

"Haunted?" Dean prompted, with a more careful edge.

Shaheen averted his eyes. "I dunno. I mean, there's always something going on there, it's kind of nuts—you probably saw it on the way here, Mass Ave and Cambridge Street? It's totally insane."

"All the intersections here are insane," Dean said with a snort.

Shaheen chuckled uncomfortably. "I know, man, I know. And, well, there are a lot of accidents at that intersection, pretty much all the time. The streets come in at strange angles, and sometimes it's hard to tell which light is yours, and when you can turn, and it's constantly full of cars and pedestrians, and it's—it's just a complete cluster fuck, all the time. So it took a while for people to notice."

"Notice what, exactly?" Sam asked.

"That there were way more accidents than usual. Even for the fall, when the numbers go way up, with all the freshmen and their parents in from out of town. It usually takes a couple weeks for things to calm back down, but this year it just didn't. It only got worse. People just keep doing all this stupid shit, slamming on their brakes for no reason, getting themselves rear-ended. Or suddenly swerving into the wrong lane, or driving up onto the sidewalk. It's a fucking mess."

"Sounds like it," Dean said darkly. "Thank god we found a safe place to put the car, Sam."

Sam ignored him. "So the accidents have just been getting worse. Does anyone have any idea why?"

"Well, some people think they do." Shaheen swallowed, and Sam nodded encouragingly. "After a while, people started talking about… seeing things. Seeing people, or, well, seeing this _guy_ , anyway. This guy who just appears out of nowhere, like out of thin air, in front of your car, before you can avoid him. And, I mean, I didn't pay much attention at first, I don't think anyone really did, because, that's crazy. I mean, people here are idiots, and they don't watch where they're going, and they seem to appear out of nowhere all the time, because everyone's distracted and listening to their iPods and not paying attention and whatever else. So I honestly just thought that these people were out of their minds, just looking for excuses for their bad driving. But, well, I don't know."

The waitress appeared again, setting Dean's chili and two beers in front of him, and Shaheen suddenly seemed to remember that he was in public. His mouth snapped shut as soon as he saw her, and he shifted in his seat.

"You want one of these?" Dean asked, sliding one of his beers across the table to Shaheen.

Shaheen glanced at him. "Yeah, actually. Thanks." He reached for the beer, and took a long sip.

"So," Sam said, as Shaheen set the glass back down. "You thought people were just making excuses, but you don't anymore?"

"Well, it just. It hasn't gotten any better, and more and more people claim to have seen… something, and well. I—I don't know."

"Have you seen it?" Sam asked.

Shaheen wouldn't quite look at him.

"We don't think you're crazy," Dean said, in his best Sam-voice. "Honestly."

Shaheen eyed him cautiously for a moment before giving a resigned sigh. "Yeah, I saw him. I was on my bike, that's how I got this." He held up his arm to show a nasty scrape on his elbow and forearm. "Fucking scared me right off of my bike. I'm lucky I didn't get hit by a car once I went down."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Maybe that'll get you to rethink weaving in and out of traffic on your bike, now, huh?"

"Dean," Sam said, scowling at him. "Ignore him," he said to Shaheen. "What did you see, exactly?"

Shaheen shrugged. "I don't know, just a guy. I didn't get a very good look at him. He just appeared, right in front of me, and I had to jerk the handle to keep from hitting him, and I fell off. By the time I got a look around, he was gone. Or disappeared. Or whatever."

"Did you notice anything about him? Anything at all about what he looked like?"

Shaheen shrugged. "He was a white guy, I think. Kinda… dark hair, maybe."

"Are there any rumors about who he might be?"

Shaheen eyed them uneasily. "You guys really are serious about this, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "We are."

"Well, there aren't any rumors that I've heard, but I've never really been in the loop around here. No one really tells me anything."

Sam grinned knowingly. "Some things never change, huh?"

"Shut up," Shaheen said with a smirk. "So this is what you do now, huh? Gave up on law school to go hunt ghosts?"

"Pretty much," Sam said, smiling helplessly. "It's not quite that simple, but. Yeah."

"When Becky told me to call you, I was sure she was fucking with me," Shaheen said. "I nearly dropped the phone when you actually answered, man."

Sam colored a bit. "Yeah, sorry. I just kind of... fell out of touch."

Shaheen shrugged. "Just glad you're OK. We were worried. You know, after everything. It's really good to see you."

"Thanks," Sam said, and Dean thought that Shaheen might not suck as much as he had originally thought. "You, uh," Sam said, after a moment, "you still in touch with everyone, since coming out East?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Shaheen said, smiling. "I don't have much time these days, but Facebook keeps us all a little too close, if you ask me."

"Yeah?" Sam said, laughing. "What are they all up to? Is anyone else nearby?"

Dean watched for a moment as Sam fell easily into a familiar banter with Shaheen, talking about people he'd never heard of like they were family, before turning his attention to the no-longer piping-hot bowl of chili in front of him. He picked up his spoon and stirred it.

Sam laughed about something (or someone), and Dean felt an irrational flare of anger. He shoved his spoon into the chili, hard, and thought about making a show of his first bite, thought about plugging his nose and just swallowing it real quick, like he had shown Sam how to do when he was six and their dad made them finish whatever they could find in the fridge before he figured out where the next round of groceries were coming from.

He didn't, though, and when he finally did brave his first bite, it was actually something pretty close to delicious, which made Dean hate it even more.

"So, uh, how was the wedding?" Dean heard Sam say uneasily.

"Awesome. The ceremony was short and the party was bitching. But, you know, that's Danny."

"Yeah." Sam nodded, with a small chuckle.

"A bunch of us were hoping you would show up, put in a surprise appearance. We thought maybe you actually would."

"I would've loved to, believe me. But I, uh, missed the invite, I guess."

Shaheen shrugged. "A couple of people thought you might not have _been_ invited, but I knew that was horseshit. I mean, there's always a chance that history like that'll make things awkward, but—"

"No, no," Sam said quickly, going red and glancing at Dean.

"Exactly," Shaheen continued. "You guys were always totally cool, after all that. And he was asking about you at the reception. He said he'd tried and failed like all the rest of us to track you down."

"Yeah, well," Sam said, his face pinched. "That's, uh, my bad. Um, so, hey, do you have time to show us around this afternoon at all? Take us up to that intersection, maybe?" He waved at the waitress, asking for the bill.

Shaheen looked confused at the abrupt change of subject, but comprehension seemed to dawn as he threw a very unsubtle glance at Dean. It was all Dean could do not to laugh out loud. Whatever the story with this Danny character was, it was good.

"Actually, shit," Shaheen said, glancing at his watch, "I have class in about ten minutes, and then I've got to go to work, but what are you doing tonight?"

"Depends on what we find out, I guess," Sam said.

"The roomies and I are having party at the house, you should come. Both of you," he said, smiling at Dean. "Should be a good time."

"Yeah, man, that sounds great," Sam said quickly, without so much as looking at Dean. "We'll be there."

"Awesome," Shaheen said. "Anytime after eight. I'll text you the address."

Shaheen stood and left, and Sam quickly busied himself with the bill.

"You know you're going to tell me what that was all about, right?" Dean said, and he knew he didn't need to be any more specific.

"No, I'm not," Sam said, as he full-on _blushed_.

"Sammy, you _dog_!"

"Shut up, Dean."

"Just tell me this much: when you slept with Danny's girlfriend, were they still together?"

"Shut up, Dean."

"Or were they on a 'break'? And is this the same girl he just married?"

"Shut _up_ , Dean. Let's go see what we can find at that intersection." He stood, tossing cash down on the table, and bee-lined for the door.

"Fine, fine," Dean called after him, "but you know I'm going to get this out of you sooner or later."

-=-=-=-=-=-

They waded through crowds of people in Harvard Square, past bookstores and boutiques and convenience stores. This was definitely easier to do on foot, but Sam noticed that Dean seemed to take a cue from the Impala. His brother continued to look out of place here, almost tripping on cobblestones and nearly crashing into hipsters, homeless people, and sleep-deprived coeds absorbed in their iPhones.

Sam wasn't ashamed to admit to himself that he rather enjoyed watching Dean be the big awkward one, for once.

Not that Sam felt exactly at home, either. It didn't help when a tiny older woman with silver hair gasped in their direction. "My God! You two are _giants_!"

They passed by an old church with an ancient graveyard. Sam imagined that you could stand in there and completely forget, for a second, that it wasn't 1801. But then you would look up and notice the extremely fragile, haunted-looking old Vietnamese man sitting on a bench opposite the cemetery, coaxing high-pitched squeals from a delicate string instrument. To Sam's surprise, Dean dug around in his pockets and deposited some loose change into the shoebox at the man's feet. Dean noticed Sam's raised eyebrows and shrugged. "What d'you wanna bet that guy hates Boston even more than I do?"

They emerged out of the dense crowd, passing a bus stop and approaching the three-way intersection.

"Damn," Dean said, with a low whistle. "I'm surprised people don't get flattened here every day."

"It's not the best urban planning I've ever seen," Sam agreed. If normal intersections were a simple cross, this one was a primitive symbol, angles askew and irregular. It was unclear, to Sam's untrained eye, which lanes belonged to which cars. A crosswalk bisected the roads, connecting a public park with a stretch of manicured lawn and stately buildings that could only be the Harvard Law School campus.

Sam recognized one large, neo-classical building as the law school library, and a memory flashed into his mind like a light bulb turning on: there he was, sitting at his crappy desk in the dorm, paging through a glossy prospectus with the Harvard seal on the cover. Page one: a multicultural array of law students bent studiously over their laptops. Page two: a multicultural array of law students perched on their seats in class, gazing at a wizened professor. Even then, Sam saw Stanford Law on his horizon; but he couldn't help imagining himself into those Harvard pictures.

He heard the voice of Professor Lipsky, his mentor, _the anti-Dad_ , encouraging him to check out his alma mater: "I have a feeling Harvard seems worlds away to you, Sam. But maybe that's exactly why you should explore the possibility." Professor Lipsky, who never asked him many questions about his family or his pre-college life, but who seemed to understand that Sam had traveled a long way to get to Stanford.

Professor Lipsky… where was he now? Sam had memories of dinners at his house with his wife, a novelist. Thoughts of Lipsky led to thoughts of Shaheen and the other guys, to his classes, to staying up late into the night pounding out another poli-sci paper as if it were the most important, urgent, worthy mission in the universe. Thoughts of class led to thoughts of Danny… and thoughts of Danny led inevitably to thoughts of Jess.

Jess.

"Sammy!"

Sam jerked. Dean was staring at him a little bug-eyed. They had arrived at the crosswalk of the intersection. Volvos, Saabs, and Mini Coopers sped through, somehow not smashing into each other.

"What the fuck, Sam. Where _are_ you?"

"Aw, Dean—" Sam didn't know what to say. _Sorry, Dean. Just remembering my old life and my dead girlfriend. Just daydreaming how my world might be without you._

There was just no way to explain it to Dean. Not without breaking his brother's heart. Sam felt a little embarrassed, both for Dean and for himself, to be thinking in those terms.

Speaking of embarrassing, it was at this moment that Dean chose to whip out his EMF reader. Never had a beat-up old walkman/paranormal energy reader been so out of place. A frat boy with iPod buds in his ears openly scoffed at Dean, while a pierced and bespectacled teenager wearing a vintage concert t-shirt regarded him with admiration.

Dean waited a moment, head cocked as if actually listening to those headphones, before ripping them off and stuffing the whole thing back in his jacket. "Never tried using this thing on a city grid. Too much interference."

Sam shrugged. "What would it have told us anyway? We know there's a ghost."

"Yeah, according to your pal Cherise."

"Dean, you know his name."

"I'm just saying, maybe we should confirm some of these sightings? Like… what's that across the street?"

Dean gestured to a restored colonial whose windows provided a clear view of the intersection; inside were the Harvard Law Review offices.

"That's like a journal, Dean."

"The newspaper? Maybe they've been reporting on it."

"No… not that kind of journal. It's a scholarly review." Even as he uttered the words he knew how ridiculous that would sound to Dean. He expected some wise-ass comeback. Instead, Dean just looked at him, almost thoughtfully, then turned fully around to face the park behind them.

"There are some homeless dudes over by that statue. I'm guessing they'll be a little more useful than a 'scholarly review.'" Sam observed Dean's lips twist with—what? Derision?

When did he start having such a hard time reading his own brother?

They set off towards their targets, passing teenagers basking in the grass and people sitting in quiet isolation on park benches. The 'homeless dudes' turned out to be a man and woman, each with long scruffy hair pulled back in bandannas. They were each wearing layers of clothes and had a small mountain of duffel bags and boxes piled up next to the statue. Several cats and dogs, all eerily quiet and tame, were curled up around the couple and their things. They were aware of Sam and Dean's approach, observing them with open curiosity.

"Howdy," the man said.

Dean nodded. "We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."

The woman perked up. "What paper are you from?"

"Excuse me?" said Sam.

"We're not from a paper, we're… students," Dean said, in that way he had which suggested that he himself didn't believe what he was saying.

"At the college?" the homeless man asked, understandably dubious.

"No! No…" Dean smiled and waved his hand. "The… uh… journalism school."

"At Harvard?"

"What, we don't look like Harvard material to you?" Dean sputtered, before Sam could intervene.

"Ha ha, Dean, you know there isn't a school of journalism at _Harvard_ … no, we're from BU."

"Ha ha!" Dean barked.

"Actually, we're doing a project for school, and we're hoping you can answer a few questions for us."

"Oh here," the woman reached into her jacket and produced a small business card. "You can contact our publicist at this email address."

"Um…" Sam managed, reaching for the card.

"You've never heard of us? I assumed you wanted to interview us about our pets, or our clothing store…"

"You have a clothing store? Where, on the other side of this statue?" Dean made a face, then shook his head. "Actually, no. Never mind. Look, we don't want to know about you—"

"—Though we're sure you have an amazing story!" Sam interjected.

"We're doing an article about… paranormal activity. In Boston." Dean pronounced 'Boston' like a bad taste in his mouth.

The woman raised an eyebrow. She clearly didn't believe a word they were saying, but she nodded anyway. "You want to know about the ghost in the intersection there."

Sam and Dean must have looked like eager puppies. The man continued, "We haven't seen it, but we know who it is."

"You do?" Sam said.

"Who else could it be? It's that poor law student who died there."

"What? Some kid died there?" Dean turned to Sam. "How could your precious Sharon have missed _that_?"

"When was this?" Sam asked.

The man scratched his head. "Oh, must have been about two years ago."

"Was it an accident?" Dean said.

Sam felt like he knew the answer before the woman spoke. "I don't think so. Guy just walked right into traffic. Plowed down by a city bus."

Dean shuddered. "Know why he did it?"

"How the hell would we know that?"

"I don't know, should we ask your publicist?" Dean snapped.

"Okay, Dean," Sam said, patting his brother on the shoulder and turning away. He nodded at their informants. "Thanks a lot."

"Yeah, good luck on your 'project,'" the woman said to their retreating backs.

"Guess it's time to do some research," Sam said.

"I'm not going anywhere near a library in this town," Dean warned. "They'd probably chase me out with pitchforks."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it."

When they reached the intersection, Dean wanted to go through another time with his EMF reader, just in case. The walk light turned on, and they started across the street. Dean was looking down, focused on turning on the reader, when a green Subaru's brakes squealed. Out of nowhere, it swerved out its lane and into the crosswalk.

It was over before Sam knew it; his body moved without participation from his brain. When he could think again, the Subaru had screeched to a halt halfway into the intersection, the huge-eyed female driver clutching at the wheel. Sam and Dean were in a pile on the asphalt, where Sam had deposited them after lunging, grabbing Dean, and throwing them both out of the car's trajectory.

Their bodies panted together in the same shocked rhythm. He felt Dean's chest heaving beneath the palm of his hand. The driver got out of her car, trembling. Pedestrians started to gather, and car horns began to honk.

"There was a man in the street!" the driver bleated. "I swear! I'm sorry! I thought..."

"I saw him too!" a bystander volunteered.

"Where is he?" another asked, stooping to look under the car.

"I don't know! It looked like—I swear he just... disappeared..."

"Did you see him? Did you...?"

With a reluctance more powerful than his own racing pulse, Sam let go of Dean so they could stand up, brush off, and interview the witnesses.

-=-=-=-=-=-

"Oh, _yes_ ," Dean said. "Yes, yes, _yes_." He gripped his menu a little bit more tightly and unconsciously rubbed his fingers against the plastic.

"Should I leave you two alone?" Sam asked, arching a wry eyebrow in Dean's direction.

"Shut up. _This_ is how real men eat." He set his menu down on the marbleized laminate tabletop with satisfaction. "You can't go wrong at a place best known for both its double cheeseburger _and_ its double lobster roll special. This is a classy joint, Sam." Sam rolled his eyes. "And they've got real beer," Dean said triumphantly as the waitress arrived with two tall glasses.

"Are you ready to order, then?" she asked, blushing a little when Dean smiled at her.

"Two double cheeseburgers, please," Dean said.

"What?" Sam said incredulously. "No. I'll have the grilled chicken sandwich."

"What are you, my wife? I wasn't ordering for you. They're both for me."

The waitress giggled and Sam frowned. Dean couldn't understand why his brother was so bitchy; he'd just spent several hours in Sam's favorite place in the whole world—the library.

"So," Dean said, after the waitress had left and he'd taken a few long sips from his beer. "Tell me what you found, Sparky."

"Paul Stevens," Sam answered. "Third-year Harvard Law student, hit by a city bus at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Cambridge Street, two years ago. The details in the obit are sketchy, but it certainly sounds like suicide. I think he's our guy.

"We got a locale on the parents?"

"No. Names, but no details. I made some calls, and they don't live in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, which was listed as Paul's home. The registrar's office confirmed that he was a student here, but wouldn't give up any of his family information."

"You think you can hack into their system?"

"Probably not, at least not within any reasonable amount of time."

"So what do we do now? Just start asking around?"

Sam shrugged. "I bet most of the students will have heard something about him, it was only a couple of years ago. Some of his friends are probably still here."

"All right, so. It's Friday night, let's make the rounds. There's gotta be at least a _couple_ parties around here, right?"

"We're going to Shaheen's, remember?"

"Dude, what makes you think his friends will know anything? Shaheen had no idea who he was."

Sam shrugged. "Seems as good a place to start as any."

"You just want to party with your buddy."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

"We're on a job, Sam."

"Yeah, and you just said we should hit the parties tonight. Shaheen just so happens to be having a party. Tonight. Why shouldn't we go?"

Dean gritted his teeth, but couldn't think of a _rational_ reason. "Fine, we'll start there. But don't go getting all shitfaced and nostalgic on me, I'll need you to be ready to go if the crowd turns up dry."

Sam glared at him as Dean took a long swig of beer.

The waitress arrived, then, with two double cheeseburgers and a grilled chicken sandwich, and Dean was glad for the distraction. His burger was delicious, in all its perfect, meaty glory, and they ate in silence for several minutes.

Sam seemed even more weirdly broody than usual as he ate, and Dean found himself wondering how much all the Stanford reminders of the past couple of days had him thinking about Jess. Dean eyed his brother and struggled to swallow a suddenly too-large piece of burger.

"So, uh," Dean managed a few moments later, "You seem to like it here."

Sam looked up, surprised out of his reverie. "Yeah," he said. "I guess I do."

Dean chewed and nodded and avoided looking at him.

"I, uh," Sam said, and Dean knew he was about to hear something he wouldn't like. "I was going to apply here. To the law school."

"Really."

"Yeah. I had the application all filled out. Ready to go, just sitting on my desk."

"Why didn't you send it?" Dean said, after a minute.

"I wanted to see how that scholarship interview went, first. If Stanford had given me the money, it would've been a done deal. Figured I'd save myself the application fee until I knew."

Dean examined the fake marble swirl of the table top and blinked away the image of a crisp white envelope catching fire, blackening and twisting and disintegrating into nothing. An acid burn seared through his stomach, and he almost had to set his burger down.

He could feel Sam watching him, waiting. Dean licked at his teeth before taking another bite of his burger.

"What I don't understand, Sam," he said around meat and bun and cheese, "is why you won't tell me more about this girl you fucked that pissed Danny off so bad."

Sam's face hardened in annoyance. "Dean," he said, part exasperation, part disbelief.

"No, really, I think I have a right to know."

"I'm pretty sure you don't, actually."

"No way. It's, like, biological law or something. I'm entitled to pry every last detail out of you—especially the dirty ones."

"Shut up, Dean."

"Honestly, Sam, I didn't think you had it in you to scam on a buddy like that. I mean, you're barely able to seal the deal with available women, and I thought you had some strict moral code or whatever that would prevent these things, so what was the deal? Were you going through some sort of amoral phase?"

"Dean, seriously. You don't want to know, OK, so just shut the fuck up."

"Oh, I _do_ want to know, that much I can promise you. Was she just _that_ hot, or what?"

Sam's jaw clenched as he looked away. "Shut up, Dean."

"Was it just the once? Was she drunk? When did it happen?"

"Shut _up_ , Dean."

"Come _on_ , Sammy, I'm just proud, is all. How many times did you hook up with Danny's girlfriend?"

"Never," Sam snapped. "I didn't sleep with Danny's _girl_ friend, Dean. I slept with Danny."

Dean inhaled sharply—maybe to laugh, he wasn't sure—and promptly choked on his double cheeseburger. 

-=-=-=-=-=-

_I slept with Danny._

Sam hadn't meant to say it. But it just happened. There was Dean, sitting across from him, stuffing his mouth with burger and poking him, goading him, staring at him with that stupid fucking knowing expression on his face. For once in his life, Sam just wanted to get his brother to Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

Informing Dean over dinner that he slept with a dude certainly did the trick.

Sam leaned back and coolly observed Dean's life-and-death struggle with his cheeseburger bite. Somehow Dean won, but the moment—it must have been only seconds—stretched out into a vast universe in Sam's mind.

He felt oddly calm in his body, like he sometimes felt during the climax of a hunt. Like anything could happen, and it didn't matter. And once again, images of Stanford washed all over him. This seemed to be happening a lot lately.

-=-=-

> _November 2002._
> 
> _Sam couldn't breathe. Something was trying to smother him from above. Panicking, he jerked out of sleep and realized that he was face down on the bed, inhaling pillow. He propped himself up on his elbows, practically hyperventilating, and looked into the sleepy blinking eyes of the man next to him._
> 
> _"Jesus Christ, Sam, are you okay?" Danny mumbled, barely awake._
> 
> _Sam ran his hand through his hair, which was stiff with sleep and sweat. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine."_
> 
> _"No, you're not." Danny was more alert now, gazing at Sam like he could read his mind._
> 
> _"Just a bad dream, I swear."_
> 
> _"Sammy…" Danny instantly cringed. "Shit. I know you hate it when I call you that. Sorry."_
> 
> _"No, I'm sorry… sorry to wake you up…" Sam sighed, collapsing down on the pillow._
> 
> _"What are we, a couple of teenage girls? Enough with the apologies." Danny smiled, and Sam couldn't help but smile back._
> 
> _They stared at each other in the late morning light. Sam found himself considering the moment: here they were, sprawled out on the futon in Danny's spartan dorm room. They had fucked the night before. They'd been fucking for about two months. It had started as a drunken fumble after a party. Danny initiated. Sam (or rather, Sam's cock) surprised them both by playing along._
> 
> _Now Danny was looking at Sam with a familiar expression: half amused satisfaction, half total disbelief. Sam was pretty sure that Danny was waiting patiently for Sam to have some sort of obligatory straight dude meltdown. As if Sam would finally detect the naked guy in his bed and bolt. Danny's attitude seemed to consist of "I'll enjoy this while it lasts."_
> 
> _Sam never bothered to disabuse him of this. For his part, Sam was trying to avoid too much introspection. He wasn't sure which was weirder: the fact that he grew up hunting demons with his psychotic family, or that he currently allowed his R.A. to fuck him in the ass (and liked it, and reciprocated). The fact that he couldn't decide led him to believe that he shouldn't think about any of these things at all. But of course, he was Sam Winchester—over-analyzer extraordinaire._
> 
> _Sam could hear Dean's voice: "Sammy, stop thinking so hard! You're giving me a fucking migraine."_
> 
> _Except, it wasn't Dean that just said that. It was Danny. Hazel-eyed Danny with his long swimmer's body and slightly crooked front teeth. Danny, who got kicked out of his house at sixteen for being gay, who crashed with friends until he earned his athletic scholarship to Stanford. Danny, who'd never met Dean and never would, who found Sam dark and mysterious and hot, and expressed all these sentiments. Frequently, in word and action._
> 
> _Like now._
> 
> _"Let me distract you…" Danny reached under the covers and grasped Sam's cock in his dry, strong hand. Sam's whole body woke up and his head emptied out. He drew towards Danny, through the blankness of his mind and the whiteness of the sheets. Their mouths smashed together, all clicking teeth and stubbly unshaven skin._
> 
> _Sam held on and went with it._
> 
> _And a tiny part of him thought, "If only you could see me now, Dad."_

-=-=-

And here, in this moment, Dean had recovered and was staring at Sam with an unfathomable expression. Their surroundings faded; the whole world consisted of the two of them and the table in-between.

When Dean spoke, his voice was dangerously soft.

"So, when were you planning on telling me about this, Sam?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "What?"

"I said—"

"For Christ's sake, I heard you, Dean. It's just… you don't have the right to know every little thing I've ever done."

Dean leaned forward and spoke through clenched teeth. "Sam, hooking up with a _man_ is not exactly a little thing!"

"Don't go all caveman big brother on me, Dean. We weren't idiots. It was safe every time."

"This happened more than once?!"

"Dean, shut up!"

"No!"

"Just… use your indoor voice, okay?"

Dean's skin was starting to flush. "Sam, I'm really not in the mood…"

"Neither am I," Sam snapped. But even as he said it, he had a sudden, rather shameful realization. He was in the mood. He kind of liked watching Dean squirm. _Sadist, much?_ he thought to himself. But there was more to this than simply freaking out Dean, or making a power play. He wanted to make Dean feel… um…

Sam wasn't sure he wanted to investigate that line of thought further.

"Sam, look, just. Tell me what happened."

Sam sighed. "Okay. Okay. It was my freshman year. He was a year ahead of me." He made an editorial decision to omit that Danny was his R.A.; he didn't want to send Dean's protective instincts over the edge. "We just… I don't know. I guess you could say we dated."

"For how long?" Dean demanded.

"Like three months," Sam said. It really was over in a flash, but Sam knew that in Dean's universe, three months was practically married. "It wasn't, like, traditional dating… we weren't boyfriends or anything."

Dean visibly shuddered at the b-word. Sam leaned forward a little, angry and defensive but genuinely interested in something: "Dean, seriously—after everything we've seen—all the real evil you know is out there—I never expected any homophobic bullshit from you."

Dean looked at him sharply. "As if, Sam. I don't give a fuck that you… fucked a dude."

"You just can't believe I didn't tell you," Sam finished. "What's the problem… jealous that some guy mattered to me, and he wasn't you?"

_I didn't just say that_ , Sam thought, for the first time scaring himself a little. They sat there, frozen. Dean was only a few feet away, but the distance between them was enormous. Sam felt that if he were to reach out and touch Dean's face, he would feel… nothing. The thought filled him with dread and he became absorbed in the salt and pepper shakers on the table.

"You boys need anything else?" It was the waitress. Sam could barely see her. He heard Dean ordering another round. There were several moments of silence, in which the waitress moved to the bar and drew them each a new beer. She deposited their drinks and left again. Sam forced himself to meet Dean's eyes.

There was a slight smile playing over his brother's lips. It filled Sam with relief. "Okay, Sammy," Dean declared, taking a long drink.

"Yeah," said Sam. He took a deep sip himself.

"How about you finish telling me about Danny." Dean's tone was carefully neutral, but there was no question in his voice. Sam decided to proceed with caution.

"Um… yeah, well. Like I said, it was just a few months. Then we stopped."

"Why? You too much for him, big boy?" Dean chuckled, having switched from bad cop to good cop. They were buddies again.

Sam felt slightly uncomfortable. They were working efficiently through their beers. He was aware of Dean signaling the waitress for yet more reinforcements. Clearly, neither of them could get through this conversation sober.

"Not exactly… he wanted to, you know, be in a relationship. At first he was cool with keeping things casual, but somewhere along the way he got all these ideas about us. I was sort of a jerk—I liked the guy a lot, but I couldn't really handle it."

"Because you're not gay?" Dean suggested helpfully.

"No… I mean, I don't know, Dean. It was never really about being gay or straight or bi…"

"Then what was it about? A big 'fuck you' to the old man?" Dean couldn't hide his smugness at figuring it all out.

Sam, though rather impressed at this brotherly insight, wasn't going to let Dean get the last word. "Sure. Yeah, Dean, maybe it was about Dad. I know this is hard for you to understand, but I needed to see myself through someone else's eyes. Danny… Danny did something for me. He saw something in me that no one else did."

He paused, accurately reading the expression his brother's face. "And don't say, 'Yeah, himself.' Grow the hell up, Dean. He was a good guy. We stayed friends. I hope he's happy with his new husband."

Dean shrugged, as if possibly conceding this point. "And I take it Shaheen knew all about this."

Sam felt relieved to shift into this territory. "Oh yeah. I mean, my whole circle of friends knew. We didn't broadcast it but it wasn't exactly a secret either."

There was a thoughtful break. Then Dean's right eyebrow cocked, and he simply said one word: "Jess?"

Sam understood. "Yeah, she knew." Dean looked at him incredulously. "Are you asking if she minded? Dean, Jess was practically raised by her lesbian aunts in L.A. She was the least judgmental person I've ever known. It was one of the best things about her." Sam experienced a genuine sense of warmth at this memory. This was the first time he had really thought about Jess in a long time; and instead of wanting to curl up in a fist of rage and grief, he felt a peculiar, quiet sadness settle in his body.

Dean appeared to be considering this, looking much more relaxed; they were both a bit drunk. "Yeah, but Sammy, it's one thing to have nice homo relatives. You were her boyfriend. Don't you think that's a little different? Like, she had to picture you with a dude, dude!" Dean's eyes widened with wonder at the thought.

Sam was buzzing. "Dean… this is going to blow your mind, man, but I gotta tell you—she thought it was hot."

"What?!"

Sam shrugged. A smile was taking over his face. With their brotherly camaraderie in place, it actually felt kinda good to talk about this. "Yeah, she liked to hear stories about it… with details…"

Dean's eyes went even wider, for a moment, and then he suddenly seemed to come to his senses. He slammed the table top a little too hard, drawing stares from other booths.

There was an instant, awkward tension reinstated between them.

"Sam, you're right. It's none of my goddamn business." He caught the waitress's eye. "Let's get the fuck out of here. We've got work to do."

-=-=-=-=-=- 

"2115, right?" Dean asked, gesturing to the grey two-story on their left. Sam nodded and climbed the front steps, then paused as he looked at the buzzers for the four apartments that had apparently been carved out of the old building.

"Shit," he mumbled, and fished his phone out of his pocket to check Shaheen's text for the third time, after they'd forgotten the street name, and then the address, and now the apartment number. Dean squinted down the dark street, trying not to watch Sam out of the corner of his eye, and willed himself to relax. He really should've had another beer before they'd left the diner. He was pretty sure there was no level of drunk that was drunk enough for this.

"Look, Dean," Sam said as he tucked his phone back into his pocket. Dean managed a glance at him as he opened and closed his mouth. "We can still—we can still do this, right? Just… focus on the case?"

Dean frowned, and needed an honest-to-God moment to remember what case Sam was even talking about. Then he blinked. "Dude, of course. I'm a professional." Sam eyed him uncertainly, and Dean looked back down the street. "Honestly, man, it's fine. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal."

Sam paused for a long moment, and Dean was afraid that he was going to try to talk about it again. But, "OK," Sam said, and pressed one of the buzzers. "Just… get as much info as you can. Let me know when you want to leave."

_How about right now_ , Dean didn't say, because that would have meant more time alone with Sam, and he needed a break from that, at the moment.

A minute later, they were inside Shaheen's apartment, and Dean immediately turned right, in part because that was the direction of the booze table, and in part because Sam had turned left. He tossed the twelve pack that Sam had (wisely, Dean had to admit) insisted they bring into the cooler, and was halfway through a cold one before he could turn around and take in the party around him.

It was a pretty small party, but the living room was close to full. He scanned the various circles, trying to work out who seemed the most likely to know about their ghost, but somehow he ended up just staring at Sam. Who had found Shaheen, and was being introduced to a small group. They drifted towards the beer table, so Dean moved away. Dean eyed Shaheen's friends, wondering if any of them were like this Danny character, if any of them had known him, if any of them had their sights set on Sam as he settled down onto the couch with a laugh, his legs sprawling.

Dean closed his eyes a moment and took a long sip of his beer. He tried to settle his mind, which was a swirling mess of new information and a host of unwelcome images of Sam, and his bottle was empty incredibly quickly.

He opened his eyes and surveyed the room, turning his mind to the case as purposefully as he could. He needed to start talking to people. There were pockets of women around the room, standing in twos and threes, and he found himself approaching the closest one without even thinking about it, driven by some fundamental need to restore some balance to the universe.

He talked to Kristy and Lisa, a pair of brunettes in their second year who had both worked in New York City over the summer, but they'd never heard of Paul. Nicole, a 3L redhead originally from Tampa Bay, had heard of him, but didn't know any more than Dean already did. Whitney, a rather buxom blonde, launched into a rant about the lack of support of struggling law students that lasted for a good fifteen minutes (at least) before Dean could get her to clarify that she was not actually a law student, but was here with her boyfriend, Tom, who _was_ , and maybe Dean should go talk to him? One look at Tom made it pretty clear how he felt about Dean enjoying Whitney's too-tight tank top, though, and even though Dean could totally take the guy, he didn't actually want to.

So he continued making the rounds, focussing as intently as he could on the women he was talking to, waiting for one of them to spark some interest—in his upstairs brain or down, he didn't care. He just needed a fucking distraction. Someone—anyone—to stop him from looking over at Sam every five seconds.

But it wasn't _working_. No one had anything interesting to say about Paul at all, and every time Dean would take notice of an inviting smile or a well-fitted pair of jeans, he'd hear Sam let out a loud laugh across the room (or maybe just inside his head), and he'd look over in time to catch Sam throwing his head back, exposing a ridiculously long stretch of neck, and it was all he could do not to grind his teeth into dust.

"Hey there," said a girl who had sidled up next to him. She was cute, brunette and bubbly, and smiling up at him with bright blue eyes. "I'm Ashley."

"Hi, Ashley. Dean."

"You look a little tense, Dean."

"Do I?"

She nodded, giving him an overly sympathetic look. "You do." She leaned in closer, and Dean could smell it on her before she said anything. "You want some of this?" she whispered, surreptitiously opening her hand for him, displaying a colorful glass pipe.

Dean didn't smoke pot. He'd been known to do it once or twice, especially if he was headed to bed with someone who offered, but it didn't particularly appeal to him. Booze was cheaper and did the job better, as far as he was concerned.

In that moment, though, he really wanted to. It smelled amazing, and Ashley was fucking _cute_ , and this was probably exactly what he needed.

"What's wrong, you gotta work in the morning or something?" Ashley said, to Dean's hesitation.

Dean chuckled humorlessly. "No, but, uh," _I'm supposed to be working right now_. "Thanks, but no."

"OK," Ashley said, lifting her shoulders as if to say _I tried_. "But try to relax, would you? You're making some of us nervous." Dean frowned. "And maybe it would help if you just went and _talked_ to him, already," she muttered.

Dean stared at her back as she walked away, and felt himself starting to lose it. Trying (and failing) not to look at Sam again, he made his way from the room, in search of the bathroom. He closed the door behind him and leaned up against it, closing his eyes and expelling a few deep breaths.

"C'mon, man," he muttered to himself. He took a piss and splashed some water on his face, but it didn't really help. It was time to go. He'd canvassed the party and come up dry, and Sam was looking way too comfortable to be getting any work done, either. They both needed some air and a change of scene.

When Dean walked back out into the party, the first thing he noticed wasn't Sam, for a change, but Ashley. She was in a large armchair, sitting in the lap of a tall girl with dirty-blonde hair. Ashley held the pipe to her own lips, then leaned in close to the girl's face, and breathed the smoke into her open mouth. The other girl inhaled and held her breath, and so did Dean. He watched, hoping, as she turned her head to the side to expel the smoke, and then, _yes_ , leaned up to kiss Ashley's mouth.

" _Nice_ ," he breathed to himself, and then turned without thinking to find Sam, because Sam needed to see this, too. But when his eyes found Sam, sprawled on the small sofa next to Shaheen, looking ridiculously large and drunk and _happy_ , chatting with this buddy, laughing, making a million new friends with just a smile and a handshake, Dean had to catch his breath.

Dean swallowed down his guilt, again, at how little of this Sam he knew. He wondered how much else had gone on at Stanford, how much else he didn't know about.

He watched Sam take a long pull from his beer, and felt something hot and dark flare in his gut. He had a sudden flash of Sam at eighteen, probably only a month or two before he had left, sprawled out on Bobby's dirty couch, tired and angry and sucking down a longneck then, too. Dean couldn't tear his eyes away fast enough.

He just stood there for a moment, breathing, and looked back at the girls in the armchair. They were still in-between drags, and he watched them as they kissed. Ashley's hands slid up the other girl's throat, and she rocked her hips a little as the girl's hands pressed against her back. Dean watched and imagined the rub of their jeans, the press of their chests.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Dean blinked and turned abruptly to his right, where a petite blonde was eyeing him pointedly, her arms crossed over her chest.

"I—uh. What?" he said, shaking himself a bit.

"You think they're here for your entertainment?"

He stared at her a moment. She raised a challenging eyebrow. "Now that's not fair," he said, and he didn't have to try that hard to sound offended. "I didn't _ask_ them to go over there and start making out." Her expression didn't change. "And I can't help it if I've got a… natural curiosity."

She eyed him a moment longer, before smirking. "Yeah, well. Don't get your hopes up," she said resignedly. "They're not gonna go any further than that." She smiled, and Dean frowned.

"Huh?" Dean said.

"They do this at every party. Just to get a rise out of people. Tease us and tease us and tease us, but they never give us any more than just that."

Dean stared at her, confused, then looked back at the girls in the armchair. "OK," he said.

"I'm Carrie," she said, extending her hand.

"Oh, we're friends now?"

She smiled and shrugged. "If you'd like."

"Dean," he replied, shaking her hand. "And it's nice to meet you, Carrie, unless you've got any more angry feminist rants you want to throw at me."

"Ha," she said. "Not for another few minutes, at least."

Dean could deal with that. They turned their attention back to the girls in the armchair, but Dean found himself glancing back at Carrie several times in quick succession. He'd never checked out girls with a lesbian before.

"So what brings you here tonight, Dean?" she asked.

"It's a party, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but. Don't take this the wrong way, but, you seem a little out of place."

"That's sweet of you to say," he said flatly. "Thanks."

"That's not a bad thing, believe me. I'm just intrigued."

He eyed her a moment, and gave a small shrug. "My brother knows Shaheen. I'm here with him."

"Oh yeah? Which one's your brother?"

Dean gestured towards Sam. "Ginormo over there, taking up the whole couch."

"Really?" she said, with a glance at Sam and an expression of surprise.

"Uh, yeah. Why?"

"Um," she frowned. "No reason, I just… would not have guessed that that's how you knew him." She looked a little embarrassed. Dean frowned and cocked his head, but she pressed on before he could ask her what she meant. "So, um, are you in from out of town?"

"Yeah," Dean said, and decided that he'd had just enough beer to let it drop. "We're just passing through. Bit of a road trip."

"Nice," Carrie said. "That sounds fun."

"It can be."

"And what do you do, that you can take a road trip this time of year? Are you in school?"

"No, no. My job takes me on the road, actually. I, uh, tour the country, hunting and destroying various supernatural beings."

Carrie blinked, and then laughed. "That sounds… dangerous."

Dean smirked. "It can be. But someone's gotta do it."

"I suppose so," Carrie said. She chuckled again, and shot him a warm, sideways look.

"I'm a mechanic," he admitted, raising his shoulders.

"Really?" she said. "I like that. If there's one thing this place needs, it's more mechanics." Dean laughed. "So you're good with your hands, huh?"

"You could say that."

"My dad was a mechanic, actually," she said. "I love the smell of it. You know, the oil and the grease he could never get out from under his fingernails."

She grasped one of Dean's hands, pulling it close for an inspection. Dean blinked and suddenly found himself wondering if _everyone_ who went off to some big fancy school came out batting for both teams, because there was no way this girl wasn't into him.

"You've got pretty clean hands, for a mechanic," she observed.

"Yeah, I'm between jobs right now. Just working on my own car, really."

"And I bet you drive something _awesome_."

Dean smiled. He liked this girl.

They talked for a long time, though Dean lost track of it, and wasn't sure how late it was when Sam passed them on the way to the bathroom. He suddenly realized he'd been thoroughly distracted from everything. He felt guilty, for a moment, knowing that he'd completely forgotten to work the case, but at least the evening wasn't going to be a total loss.

"So, Carrie," he said easily, "you wanna get out of here?"

She smiled, but looked surprised. "Um..."

She didn't say anything, and Dean wondered if he'd read her entirely wrong. "Sorry," he said, "that was stupid."

"Why?" she asked.

He looked at her a bit helplessly. "You made it pretty clear when you came over here that… you like, you know…"

She raised her eyebrows.

"Girls," he managed.

She smiled. "No, no," she said. "I mean, _yes_ , but that's not it. I, uh, I guess I was just surprised when you didn't make a move, earlier. And then I figured you weren't going to. So it just… caught me a little off-guard."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's OK."

An awkward moment passed, and Dean wondered what the fuck was wrong with him right now. Here was this hot girl, who was clearly into him, and he was just... sucking. Clearly he'd been spending too much time with his brother, whose complete lack of smoothness was apparently catching. "So… do you?" he asked. "Wanna get out of here?"

"No, thanks," she said, and seemed to want to leave it at that.

Dean frowned, perplexed as she smiled at him. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, realizing that he was just never, ever going to get laid at Harvard.

_Fuck it_ , he thought, and decided to focus on what he could. "Say, you ever heard of that kid, Paul Stevens, who jumped in front of a bus near here?"

Carrie struggled to follow the abrupt change of subject. "What?" she said, with a small, surprised laugh. "Um, yeah, actually."

"How much did you know about him?"

Carrie gave him a skeptical look. "Why do you want to know?"

Dean shrugged. "Just curious. Looking for some horror stories to talk my brother out of going to law school."

Carrie laughed. "Oh, I could give you some of those, no problem." She sighed. "Poor Paul."

"Did you know him?"

"No. I met him once, maybe twice. He didn't make much of an impression, at the time. His girlfriend, though, she was kind of high profile around here. Big personality, if you know what I mean. So... people talked about him."

"What'd they say?"

"That he was in trouble. From the start, he really struggled. He was one of those kids who clearly didn't actually want to be here, you know? But Mummy and Daddy weren't giving him much choice."

Dean frowned. "So you think that's why he did it? Stepped in front of a bus instead of standing up to his family?"

Carrie shrugged. "Like I said, I didn't know the guy. I'm in no position to claim that I have a clue what was going on inside his head. But I'm sure coming home to Julia every night didn't help."

"His girlfriend?" Carrie nodded. "And why was that?"

"She was perfect. Top of her class, law review, had a job lined up from practically the first day she stepped on campus. Whereas he almost didn't pass his first year and couldn't get a job to save his life. Which is kind of a horrible thing to say, I guess, considering."

"They sound like an odd couple."

"Definitely. We all figured that she must have really loved him, because otherwise being with him seemed totally out of character."

"How well do you know her?"

"Not very. She was the editor of the law review when I petitioned on. We were sort of friends, for a while, but we've lost touch since she graduated."

"She talk about Paul much?"

"No. I think they were still living together when he died, but she threw herself into school after it happened, and never seemed to want to talk about it. And we weren't close enough that I felt like I could ask."

"You don't happen to know if she's still in town, do you?" Dean asked.

-=-=-=-=-=-

"So… what do you miss the most about Stanford?" Shaheen asked, knocking back a shot.

Sam snapped out of his reverie, which consisted of feverish swirling images of Deanny—er, Danny and Dean, and the fact that he just told Dean about Danny, and... what the _fuck_ was he thinking?

"Dude, you all right?" Shaheen asked. "You look kinda spooked. Do you need another drink?"

"Yeah, I think so," Sam affirmed, reaching into the cooler for a beer. They were seated next to the bar on a small couch. The cramped apartment was dark and clogged with cigarette smoke and pot. A few feet over, two girls with thick plastic glasses and tall boots argued vehemently about Butler and Foucault. Sam turned his attention back to Shaheen.

"Miss the most? Um…"

"Oh man!" Shaheen exclaimed. "Sam, that was a _fucked up_ question. I'm sorry, dude."

"What?" Sam said, not following.

"I mean, dude, I know you miss Jess the most. I'm really sorry she died. Really sorry, man. I shoulda said that earlier, it shoulda been the first thing I said, but I just… it was awkward, you know? I didn't want to, like, distress you in front your brother."

Shaheen appeared as though he might start to cry. The guy was incredibly drunk, but Sam was touched anyway. He had never really been offered any condolences, the way normally happens when someone you love dies. He had been too busy hitting the road in pursuit of vengeance. His psychology professor would probably say he hadn't gone through the appropriate "grieving process." No shit, Sherlock.

"Shaheen, man, it's okay. I understand. It was a strange time." Sam thumped Shaheen on the shoulder in what he hoped was a manly but comforting way. "And it's not like I was around, afterward."

"Yeah, you just skipped town. We were _worried,_ man. A couple of us wondered if you had driven off a cliff or something. I was so fucking relieved when Becky told me she had heard from you and you were okay…"

Sam smiled. "Ha, well, I guess 'okay' is a relative term… remember what I do, Shaheen?"

Shaheen pursed his lips and lifted his drink, as if to say 'fair enough'. He studied Sam with slightly crossed eyes. "So Sam… now that I know what I know about your—um, 'work'—I gotta ask you. Did something… like, _supernatural_ happen to Jess? Is that what's behind this whole thing?"

Sam didn't answer right away. He found himself searching for Dean in the crowd, but he couldn't find him. "I guess… yeah, that was the start of it. No, it kinda started before that… look, Shaheen, it's complicated…"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Trade secrets. Whatever, Sam, I probably already know too much and you'll have to kill me when this is all over."

Sam made a face like he was actually considering that option, and they laughed together. It felt nice. Sam almost forgot that he had just outed himself to his brother.

"Shaheen," he said, grinning. "I didn't want to tell you this, but the thing I miss most about Stanford is _you_."

"I _knew_ it! I knew you always wanted me, Winchester."

At that moment, a skinny young man with a hook nose and an incredible bouffant of hair skipped over. He was wearing a skin-tight metallic shirt and a lot of… glitter?

"Hey, what's up, Travis?" Shaheen greeted him.

"Sha-HEEN, you must explain what that MAN is doing here." Travis extended one long elegant hand, pointing across the room. Sam finally recognized Dean in the crowd. He was, predictably, putting the moves on some blonde chick.

"Oh, that's Dean," said Shaheen.

"DEAN? Oh, of course he's named Dean! OF COURSE," Travis cried.

"He's with me," Sam blurted out for no reason at all.

"What?" Shaheen and Travis said in unison.

"I mean, he's my b—" he started to sputter.

"You two make SUCH a gorgeous couple!" Travis was thrilled. He flitted around Sam like a flutter pony. "I'm SO INTO the two of you, and I don't even know you. How long have you been together?"

Sam was dumbfounded, but Shaheen jumped in with a smirk: "It seems like practically their whole lives."

"Aw, the old married couple type?" Travis sparkled. "I LOVE it. You two are SO ADORABLE. Yet kind of scary. Like I think you could break me with your pinky fingers if you wanted…"

"That's probably true," agreed Sam.

Travis spotted someone else in the crowd, shrieked, and excused himself. Shaheen poured them more drinks. "So… is it awkward that people think you're dating your brother?"

Sam scratched his head. "Yeah. More than you could ever know." He was shocked to note how his cock twitched at the thought. He could feel the blood rushing down to his crotch, a tugging pressure building up against his jeans. _Oh, hell…_

Thankfully, Shaheen didn't seem to notice. "Sam, I got the sense earlier that you never told Dean about your little gay adventure in college."

"Well, he knows as of now!" Sam said, taking a thick swig of alcohol.

"Really? You told him just today? Dude, this is totally my fault, I never should have brought Danny up, I wasn't thinking…"

"No more apologies, Shaheen, seriously," Sam insisted. "It's fine. He didn't take it that well, but you know, I'm really relieved."

His friend nodded sagely. "It's best to just get things out in the open. To just confront the demons, y'know?"

Sam nodded also, because yes, he did know about confronting demons, he and Dean did it all the time together.

Shaheen continued: "None of this repression bullshit. It's a waste of fucking time. Life's too short, man. I guess you understand that better than me, anyway…"

Sam gazed out at Dean. The room wobbled a bit in his alcohol-soaked vision, but he could see every detail of Dean with alarming clarity. He observed his brother's broad shoulders, the way his jeans hugged his legs. Even from the distance across the room, he imagined he could make out Dean's goddamn long eyelashes. _How does a guy have eyelashes like that?_ He saw Dean's lips and he remembered kissing Danny's lips, the hot solid presence of Danny's body against his, the strength and sinew of that body, the all-consuming orgasms that detonated in his system like fucking atom bombs…

"I am so fucking drunk," he announced to Shaheen.

"Dude, right?"

They sort of leaned into each other then. Sam thought about college. About how he had felt safe there, except not, because one thing had been missing. Shaheen was talking about the dining halls, advisers, long forgotten drama from their freshman hall… Sam nodded, laughed, shared a few anecdotes. He kept an eye on Dean. Could Dean feel his eyes on him? The alcohol made Sam brilliant, and it made him stupid at the exact same time. He knew everything; he knew nothing.

"There's a lot my brother doesn't know about me," he informed Shaheen, who smiled blearily and clicked their glasses together.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Dean shouldered his way through the door back into Shaheen's living room, with an armful of duffle bag and coffee and breakfast, and found Sam still sleeping heavily on the sofa.

"Sam," he said, giving the sofa a swift kick before setting the food and drink on the table, and dropping the duffle bag to the floor. "Up and at 'em, Sammy. We've got work to do."

"Whutimeissit?" Sam groaned.

"It's late," Dean said. "I let you sleep it off while I went to check on the car and get our suits." Sam rolled over, tucking his head into one of the sofa cushions with a grunt. "C'mon, shake it off, you're going to like this one."

"Uhnnn," Sam said from within the cushion.

"We're going to a big, fancy law firm. So you gotta get up, 'cause you know I can't pull this one off by myself."

Sam was silent for a few moments, then pushed himself up off the couch and shuffled into the bathroom without a word. When he emerged, Dean shoved coffee into his hands and watched him guzzle it in several quick sips.

"So, where are we going?" Sam asked.

"We're going to see Julia McNamara, an attorney at the law firm of Hughes and Peterson."

"Who's that?"

"Our ghost's girlfriend at the time he ganked himself."

"Really?" Sam said, rubbing at his eyes. "How'd you find her?"

Dean smirked. "Had a nice long chat with a friend of hers last night. Carrie. You see her? The one with the real low-cut top on?"

Sam thought for a moment, then shrugged. "No, don't think I noticed her."

"Yeah, well, straight guys notice girls, Sammy." Sam stiffened and went a bit red, and Dean froze because the _rest_ of yesterday night suddenly came flooding back, and fuck, why couldn't he ever just keep his mouth shut?

He had managed not to think about it so far this morning, and Sam had seemed too hungover to be capable of thinking about it, and all of that was just fine, as far as Dean was concerned.

An awkward, silent moment passed. "Anyway," Dean said, "Carrie."

"Yeah, _Carrie_ ," Sam said, nastily. "Was she any good?"

"What?" Dean said.

"Was she any good, Dean? You did _fuck_ her, right? That's what you want me to know."

Dean stared at him. "Dude," he said, after a moment. Sam glared at him and looked away.

" _Anyway_ ," Dean continued, "the girlfriend, Julia, was living with Paul when he jumped in front of that bus. She graduated the year before last, but she's still in town." He held up the piece of paper that Carrie had written Julia's office information on. "So we're gonna go see her."

Sam stared at the piece of paper in Dean's hand, and seemed to struggle with himself for a moment. "Fine," he finally said. "Whatever, let's just go. I assume we're not moving the car—"

"Fuck right, we're not."

"—so you got cash for a cab?"

"No, but Carrie wrote down some directions for something called the 'T', which I guess is like the subway?" He flipped the paper in his hands over. "Do you think Shaheen needs this? The syllabus for Public International Law?"

"I'm sure it's online," Sam said impatiently. "Just take it."

One hour, forty minutes, and two wrong trains later, they emerged onto Boylston Street. "God _damm_ it," Dean gritted out. "That was _ridiculous_."

"C'mon," Sam snapped, making a right-hand turn out of the T stop.

"I mean, honestly. _Why_ do people live here? That took _forever_ , it was crowded and hot, and I'm pretty sure that stinky guy was possessed, Sam. If it weren't so dirty down there, I'd go back down after him."

"Shit," Sam said, ignoring Dean, but apparently noticing that the street numbers were going in the wrong direction, because he made an about-face and stomped back past Dean.

"This place sucks, Sam. I miss my car."

"Dean, would you shut up already? I'm having a hard enough time this morning without you running your mouth _constantly_."

Dean scowled with surprise. "Excuse me?"

"And I don't know if it's _occurred_ to you, Dean, but this woman we're about to go see? Is a fucking Harvard-trained attorney, OK? She's not gonna be easily bullshitted, so you need to fucking _focus_."

" _Dude_ ," Dean said angrily.

"So just shut up about your car and how much you hate it here and all the _girls_ you fucked last night, and let's just go do this."

Dean stared at him, his face hard.

"Fuck, just." Sam gave a tight sigh. "Is there a drugstore around here? My head is killing me."

"No, but here we are," Dean replied, pushing past Sam toward a tall, glassy building bearing the address Carrie had given him.

Sam groaned but followed him inside. The tall guy working building security examined their FBI badges a little too closely for Dean's liking, but they held up, and he let them past. Dean took the lead in charming the 34th floor receptionist, and they found themselves standing outside Julia McNamara's office without another word to each other.

"Ms. McNamara?" Sam asked, knocking on her open door.

"Yes?" The woman inside the office looked up from her computer. She wore an expensive suit and too much eye makeup and looked very annoyed to be interrupted.

"Sorry to bother you," Sam said. "My name is Sam Hetfield, this is Dean Ulrich. We're 2Ls at Harvard. We got your name from a couple of people who thought you'd be willing to talk to us."

Julia's eyes slid very obviously over the both of them, head to toe, and her irritation vanished as she leaned back in her seat. Dean tried not to smirk. "Talk to you about what?"

"We're writing a piece for the _Crimson_ about depression on campus, most especially at the law school," Sam said.

"Ah," Julia said. "So you're here about Paul, then."

"Yeah," Sam said, with a wary smile. "I hope that's OK?"

Julia nodded. "Sure."

"Is now a good time?" Sam asked. "Because we can come back."

"No, now's fine," she said. "Please, have a seat." She gestured to the pair of chairs opposite her desk. "I could use a break from these contracts, anyway."

"I bet," Sam said with a smile as he and Dean sat. She smiled back, and her gaze flitted once again down his body and lingered, eventually making its way back to his face. Dean tried not to laugh as Sam blushed and fumbled around in his bag for a pad of paper.

"First, let me just say," Sam said, "that we're very sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," Julia replied. Her eyes tracked Sam's fingers as he pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket, and Dean felt his eyebrows lift. He respected a woman who knew what she wanted, to be sure, but even _he_ found it a bit crass that she was checking Sam out so openly, given their topic of conversation.

But then she crossed her arms over her chest, drawing Dean's attention to the pull of the buttons across her breasts, and he found he didn't mind so much what she was doing with her eyes.

Sam asked another question (or maybe two) that Dean didn't quite hear, as he caught a flash of lace through the gap between Julia's buttons. She shifted a bit in her seat, and he couldn't help the small curl of his lip as he got another eyeful. He didn't notice the awkward silence that had descended upon the room until Sam threw his foot to the side, kicking at Dean's chair.

Dean snapped to attention, and was greeted with an icy stare from Julia.

"Sorry," he said, with a faux-sheepish grin and a glance at Sam. "What was that?" Sam didn't look back at him, but if there was anyone who could kill you with a look without actually _looking_ at you, it was Sam.

No one said anything, and Dean watched Sam's jaw clench.

"Hey," Dean said, with an attempt at nonchalance, "did I see a men's room just down the hall here?"

Julia just raised her eyebrows.

"Think I'm gonna go pay it a visit." He thumped the armrest of his chair. "You got this, right, Sam?"

Sam seemed barely able to open his jaw enough to speak. "Sure," he gritted out.

"OK, then," Dean said, and Sam's bitch face seemed to reach a new decibel as Dean excused himself and closed the door to Julia's office behind him.

He did actually need the bathroom, which was huge and ridiculous and _awesome_ , once he'd found it. The faucets sparkled and the stalls were mahogany and the whole place just smelled like money. He wasn't really impressed, exactly, but he had to admit that it was pretty fun to take a piss in there.

He wandered around the floor a bit after that, ostensibly checking for evidence that Paul's ghost had ever followed Julia to work, but mostly he was just killing time.

He stumbled upon what he assumed was a break room or something, and found himself suddenly beginning to understand the appeal of working in a place like this. There was a fully-stocked communal fridge, an incredible vending machine full of every delicious meal option he could imagine, an espresso machine and several carafes of coffee, each sporting a different description. It was like a coffee bar and diner all in one, and it was free.

Dean eyed the stack of to-go cups and wondered if anyone would mind a little coffee going missing, because Lord knew he and Sam could use another hit.

"Can I help you?" a man's voice came behind him, and if Dean jumped, it was only a little bit.

"Just admiring your digs," Dean said, with a smile. The man was tall, clean-cut, and wearing a suit that probably cost more than everything Dean owned, besides his car. Although, after what it must have cost to get it so expertly tailored, Dean wasn't so sure.

"Do you have an appointment with someone?" the man said.

"I did, yeah. Finished my interview a few minutes ago, and thought I'd take a stroll around until my buddy's is over. We came together."

"An interview for what?"

"Oh, you know, a job here. I'm a law student."

The man's dark eyebrows shot up. "Really?" he said, skeptically. "I didn't realize we were still conducting law school interviews. It was my understanding that they concluded last week."

"We had to reschedule."

"I see. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave, however. If you are, in fact, waiting for someone, they can meet you in the lobby."

Dean felt a Sam-worthy bitch face coming on, and he made a half-hearted attempt to suppress it. "My mistake," he said tightly. "Enjoy your coffee."

The man frowned and watched Dean as he left the room. "Hope you're pretty near done, Sam," he muttered to himself as he made his way back to Julia's office, "I think I've overstayed my welcome with these douchebags."

He was very relieved to find Sam standing in the open doorway to Julia's office. "Thank you so much for your time," Sam said, after a nod to Dean. "I really appreciate your talking to me."

"You're very welcome," she said. "It's a pretty unpleasant topic, but I think I could talk about almost anything with you." She flashed a sly smile, and Sam blushed. Dean almost regretted having left Sam alone with her, because he'd clearly missed something _epic_.

"Do you have plans for next summer yet, Sam?" she asked. "You should apply for a summer associate position here, I think you would fit in well."

"I thought you guys stopped interviewing last week," Dean said, and ignored Sam's surprised look.

"The cattle-call interviews through the law schools, yes," Julia replied dismissively. "But there's still plenty of time for those students with something special, that we somehow missed." Sam smiled embarrassedly. "Well, think about it," she said. "If you'd like to talk, you're welcome in my office anytime. Or we could go somewhere else, if you'd prefer."

Sam looked a bit like he had just bitten into a lemon, although he still wore a pretty convincing smile. Dean couldn't help himself. "You know, Sam, if you want to stay," he said, smirking, "I could probably find my way back to school on my own."

Sam's nostrils flared awesomely as he looked at Dean. "No, I've got that meeting, remember? Thank you, Ms. McNamara—"

"Call me Julia."

"—Julia. I'll be in touch."

Dean grinned as Sam thundered his way down the hall and into the elevator. "Sammy," he said, "I don't know whether to be impressed or disappointed with you."

"Stop it, Dean," Sam snapped, as soon as the doors closed.

"Stop what?"

" _This_ , OK. Just. I don't know why you're being so—" He stopped, expelling a couple of hard breaths through his nose. "Just. Don't do this here, OK. Not right now, and not here. Let's just focus and get this job done."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Sam," Dean snapped, "was I misbehaving in front of your big fancy lawyer friends? And _she_ was the one hitting on you, by the way. While you were asking questions about her dead boyfriend."

Sam just stared at the descending numbers on the elevator keypad.

Dean's jaw clenched, hard, as the doors opened into the stupidly sunny lobby of the high-rise. They stalked quickly and silently to the doors and out onto the sidewalk.

"Did she tell you where his body is?" Dean gritted out, ignoring his urge to go back up the elevator and punch Julia in her painted face.

"Cremated."

"Shit."

"I'm pretty sure we'll find something to burn in her apartment, though."

"Yeah? She kept his stuff?"

"No, she said she got rid of it. But one of the last things that happened before he killed himself was that the career office made him cut off his long hair, 'cause he was doing so poorly in job interviews. They thought a more clean-cut image might help. He kept what he cut off, apparently, to help him remember who he 'really was.'"

"Sounds like that worked out well for him," Dean scoffed, and Sam shrugged. "And you think," Dean continued, "that _that_ woman is the type to hold onto some loser's gross ponytail after he died?"

Sam gave him a disgusted look. "I think she really loved the guy, Dean."

"I'm sorry, did we meet the same woman up there? The one who was talking about her lost love and undressing you with her eyes at the same time?"

"Look, I don't know, OK? Sometimes people react to a loss like that in strange ways, Dean. And _I_ , for one, am not gonna judge her for it."

"Yeah, OK, Dr. Phil."

Sam heaved a sigh and looked down the street for a long moment. "She's got something in her apartment that was his," he said slowly. "She wouldn't say what it was, but she was really embarrassed about it. If you've got some other great lead that you haven't told me about, now would be a really good time to share with the class."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Fine. Let's go. Is there time now, or will she be leaving work soon?"

Sam huffed a laugh. "She's a second-year associate at a huge corporate law firm, Dean."

Dean looked at him blankly. "And?"

"And, so, no. She won't be leaving work for long time. Let's find a wi-fi spot. I wasn't able to get her home address, but I can probably track it down."

"No need," Dean said, and patted his suit coat pocket.

"What?"

"She had a stack of personal mail on the bookcase by her door. I slipped one in my pocket, just in case." He pulled a long envelope out of his pocket. "Hope she pays her Visa bill online."

Sam stared at the envelope in Dean's hand a moment. Dean waited for a little kudos, but they never came.

"Great," Sam said flatly. "Let's go."

-=-=-=-=-=- 

They were standing in Julia McNamara's apartment, having endured a tense journey back over the river from Boston to Cambridge. There were a million moments when Sam could have smiled, cracked a joke, or grudgingly acknowledged Dean's coup in locating Julia's home address.

But he didn't do any of these things. Instead they continued to nip at each other like dogs. Getting turned around _again_ on the T didn't help soothe anybody's irritation. _Why are you being such a little bitch?_ Sam said to himself in his best Dean voice. He just couldn't shake the feeling that somehow all of this was Dean's fault. His brother was just... so...

By the time they arrived at the apartment off Massachusetts Avenue, they were barely talking at all, choosing instead to punish each other with accusatory silences. It was in these moments, actually, that Dad's training most came in handy. They were such a well-oiled machine, they could carry off a routine job like this in total silence if necessary.

After easily picking the lock of Julia's front door, they entered her small, tidy unit. To Sam's surprise, there was a framed photo of a young man on the mantle in the living room.

"That's Paul," he told Dean, forgetting for a second that they were annoyed with each other. Sam recognized him from the small, grainy black-and-white photo with the obit.

"Wow," Dean sniffed. "Julia, carrying the torch for a geek—who knew?"

"Dean, what the hell did Julia McNamara ever do to you?" And with that, they snarled and huffed and commenced their search for some piece of Paul Stevens.

It didn't take too long, really. In the top drawer of Julia's bedside table was a delicate keepsake box. Dean found it. He opened the lid and drew out a long dark ponytail, held together with a piece of ribbon; it could only have been sheered directly from Paul's head.

"Bingo," Dean said holding the twist of hair up for Sam's inspection. It looked small and sad coiled in Dean's hand; it was hard to believe it had been connected to a living, breathing, hurting person. "Just think, Sam, this could've been you." Dean cocked his head to the side in mock-thought. "Nah, I guess even you wouldn't grow your hair this long."

Sam didn't even dignify this observation with a response. "Let's burn it and get out of here."

Dean fished his lighter out of his pocket. "I'll do it in the bathtub. You draw a salt line at the front door in case Paul raises an objection."

"Dean, I don't think we need to worry. Paul's not a violent spirit. He didn't maliciously cause any of those accidents."

"I'm not taking that chance," Dean responded, turning toward the bathroom like he just expected Sam to obey.

Sam took a deep breath and tried to control his reactivity towards his _goddamn fucking over-protective power-tripping_ brother and got out the salt.

As he crouched down in front of the door, he heard Dean opening windows in the bathroom.

It only took a moment for that sense to be overpowered by an all-too-familiar tingle running down his spine. He had been doing this for so long; picking up on the presence of a ghost was sometimes like breathing. The adrenaline began to course through him; he felt his body revert into fight mode.

Sam stood slowly and turned around. No sudden movements.

Paul was just standing there.

He was dressed like any student; he could've been one of Sam's old classmates. Ghosts sometimes appeared a little blurred around the edges, but even the lines of exhaustion around Paul's eyes were clear. As Sam watched, Paul suddenly looked up and glanced around the apartment, his expression becoming anxious. Maybe he recognized where he was.

Sam's hand twitched at his side, and he started to reach out toward the ghost. "Hey Paul, buddy," he said. He wasn't sure where the words were coming from. "I know you're tired and stressed out. Just... easy there. You're going to get to rest really soon..."

And Paul looked right at him; they locked eyes for a second, and it seemed like Paul was seeing him for the first time. Sam started to smile. _Everything is going to be all right._

"Sam, what the fuck?"

And there was Dean, holding the hair in his hand, and it was already burning. As Sam watched, the fire rushed up the ponytail like a lit fuse and the unmistakable stench of burning hair filled the apartment. Dean dropped the hair on the floor.

Paul made an anguished sound and was himself consumed, collapsing onto the ground in a pile of ash. Sam gazed in horror as his brother stomped on the hair to put it out, leaving a blackened smirch on Julia's hardwood floors.

Dean looked up, breathing heavily, a satisfied look on his face. "So much for a clean job in the bathtub..."

"Dean!" Sam realized he'd raised his voice, not exactly a stealth move after breaking into a woman's apartment, but he didn't care. "Why the hell did you do that?"

"What?" His brother looked at him in genuine shock. "Sam, that thing was right in front of you."

"That _thing_ 's name was Paul," Sam spit out. "He was confused, in pain. He wasn't going to hurt me."

"Oh, I get it," Dean responded, stepping towards him. "In the future, you'd like me ask about the monster's plans before I let it gut you?"

"No—Dean. You know that's not what I meant. I just... you really didn't need to do it like that. Paul deserved a little more respect."

"Respect? Am I hearing you right? Sam, I think you're over-identifying with that guy. I know law school was your big dream and all, but look where it got Paul."

Sam was just about ready to kill his brother. "What are you trying to say, Dean?"

"You really want to know the answer that, Sammy?" At the use of his nickname, Sam shuddered. What was happening to them? How had everything gotten so crazy?

When Sam didn't have an instant comeback, Dean wiped his face with his hand, threw Sam a dismissive glance, and gestured at the stain on the floor. "We have to clean that up."

And right away, Sam was arguing, even though he knew it was just for the sake arguing. "Dean, it doesn't matter if Julia comes home and sees all that. If she even notices the ponytail is gone, she can't trace anything back to us." He wasn't even sure why he gave a shit.

Apparently Dean felt strongly about his position, too: "The woman's a lawyer. I won't put anything past her. She's probably running a background check on you right now, Mr. Pretty Boy Law Student."

"Dean, don't start with that again…" Sam suddenly felt very weary. He began to stalk towards the door to the apartment.

"Start with _what_ Sam? Am I making you uncomfortable or something?" Dean was close at his heels, invading his space.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, you are," Sam muttered. He turned around, facing Dean. He felt strangely hyped up, yet resigned at the same time. _You're asking for it, Dean. It's not my fault you can't leave this alone._ "You've never been exactly discreet or respectful when it comes to my sex life." He paused, took a breath, and gathered his courage. "But ever since I told you about Danny, you're acting like I'm some stranger! I don't know what the hell your problem is."

His brother looked at him dangerously. "Yeah, well, sometimes I feel like I don't know you as well as I thought, Sam," he said darkly. Dean's disapproval was so profound and Dad-like, Sam felt almost ashamed of himself. Almost.

He stepped forward, taking back some of his space from Dean. He tried to remain calm. "Dean, don't you think you're overreacting just a little?"

"Look, I'm sorry I'm not one of your liberal intellectual friends who thinks everything's just _fabulous_ —"

Sam cringed. "Seriously, Dean, cool it. Don't be an asshole."

"Is that what you think of me?" Dean demanded.

Sam threw his hands up—he didn't know what to do with them, where to go, what to say anymore. "Dean, I went through this with Dad. I'm sick of begging for your approval, for the right to have my own goddamn life."

Dean went very still. "You think I'm like Dad?" he grumbled. Sam didn't say anything. He'd probably made a mistake, invoking Dad like that. They were both tensing their shoulders, shifting their weight from foot to foot. _Just like during a hunt,_ Sam thought.

Dean continued to speak, sounding deceptively mild, as if he were just thinking out loud. "You would actually compare us"—and here Dean gestured back and forth between them—"to _the shit_ that went on between you and Dad. Yeah. Right. Well, Sammy. That's a real compliment. I know what you thought of Dad."

A cool, distant, objective part of Sam actually felt kind of bad for Dean. He could sort of see what was happening here. "You're afraid I'm going to leave you."

Dean just stared at him for second, incredulous. "You think you have it all figured out, don't you? Mr. Psych 101. Well, that's fucking great. Thanks for your insight."

At this, the low-burn of Sam's anger spiked into honest rage. Here he was, doing his best to work out this crap with his impossible brother, and Dean couldn't throw him a frickin' bone. Sam could feel them moving into a different zone than their usual fights.

Dean was still talking. "Don't you get it? You have no idea what it was like. _You fucking ran away from our family_ and went to live on a whole different planet. It wasn't an accident, Sam. You didn't trip and fall into Stanford. You planned that whole thing out, keeping it a secret. And now, obviously, you've _still_ got secrets. Like Danny. So what am I supposed to think? What else have you been keeping to yourself?"

"Nothing, Dean!" Even to Sam's ears, it sounded lame and insincere. But he was so tired of this cycle of blame and distrust and betrayal, real and imagined.

"Don't lie to me Sam!" Dean's voice was ragged. "Don't fucking lie. I can tell something is going on with you. You're hiding something _right now_."

At this, Sam felt his face flush with blood and heat. _Holy shit._

But Dean, oblivious, pushed on: "I know this is hard for you to believe, but I'm not an idiot." Sam huffed and tried to walk away, but Dean blocked him. "I see the way you fit in here. Don't pretend it's not true. This is what you always wanted, isn't it? Tell me the truth, for once. Is this what you still want?"

"This?! What do you mean, like, Harvard? Law school? Jesus Christ, Dean," Sam almost laughed. "What the hell do you think? If I really wanted Julia's stupid life, I'd get it for myself. I'm not some little puppy following you around. If I didn't want to be here with you, I'd have left a long time ago. I don't know how else to prove it to you."

Dean was looking at him suspiciously. His chest was heaving; Sam focused in on his lips, which twisted into yet another derisive sneer. "Well, Sammy, that all sounds great. But you've been lying to me for a long time."

Sam struggled to understand Dean. He struggled to understand himself. "Are you talking about Danny? Aw, Dean. I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you… I figured it wouldn't make any sense to you. I didn't think you'd even care."

In the brief silence that followed, it dawned on Sam that this may have been the worst thing he could say. All at once Dean exploded, charging up to Sam, getting in his face, shoving him against the wall.

"Are you fucking kidding me, Sam?" he snarled. "You are the _only thing_ in my entire goddamn life that I have ever cared about."

"Dean—"

In that moment, Sam wished he could pretend that he didn't know what he was doing; that his body was acting without his permission; that he was possessed, out of control.

But he had never been more in control in his life.

Everything—the anger, the frustration, the sadness—it all coalesced then into a hard knot of desire. And Sam knew the desire for what it was.

He had always known.

Where there should have been revulsion, there was only heat.

He felt Dean's body close to his, heard his brother's labored breathing; he inhaled his scent, the shape of his features, all so close and real, and all he had to do was reach out.

So he did.

-=-=-=-=-=- 

Dean couldn't move. He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't blink—he just stood there, with his eyes uncomfortably wide open, as his world tilted on its axis.

Sam's lips were warm and surprisingly soft as they pressed against his a little too firmly. Sam drew a long breath in through his nose, and Dean stared at him, as best he could at such close range.

Sam pulled back, only an inch or so, and their lips separated with a wet smack that sounded entirely too much like a kiss to be real. Dean just gaped at him, and Sam's eyes went wide, too, like he couldn't quite believe what he'd just done. But then Sam blinked and swallowed, looking defiant, and Dean blinked and stared some more, because he still couldn't think. He couldn't remember where they were, or what they were doing, or what the _fuck_ they'd just been talking about.

They stared at each other for what felt like ages, but was maybe just a fraction of a second, however long it took for Sam to come to a decision—which he had, apparently, because he was leaning in, again, with a stubborn look on his face.

Warm bursts of breath came against Dean's face as Sam kissed him, again and again, and then a part of Dean's brain seemed to catch up, a bit, because he suddenly remembered that they'd been fighting, and that something was wrong, and that Sam was about to _tell_ him, goddammit, but then he just _kissed_ him, instead, and—oh.

_Oh._

Dean pulled back, a bit, because, _what_ —but Sam followed him, kept kissing him, wouldn't let him get away. And Dean, for some reason, wasn't really trying that hard to _get_ away.

Sam's tongue pushed into Dean's mouth, knocking into his own tongue, and it should have been fucking _gross_ , it really should have, but instead it just made Dean incredibly hard, incredibly fast.

And then something clicked. Or maybe his upstairs brain just... gave up. Because with a sigh and a noise he would've been horrified to hear himself make, if he had heard it, he was suddenly kissing Sam back.

Sam's tongue tasted like old coffee, and the skin around his mouth was rough with stubble, and Dean had never had to look up to kiss anyone in his life, but it was fucking perfect, because it was everything he'd been trying not to think about all day.

Everything he'd been trying not to think about for fucking _ever_ , if he were honest. An entire lifetime of ignored wet dreams—a million goddamn years' worth of confusion and frustration and jealousy and fucking _want_.

Sam's hands were on Dean's throat, and he batted them away, because he wasn't some girl, even if Sam had somehow gotten _him_ backed up against the wall, now, with their chests pressed together and Sam taking up so much space that Dean felt like he was maybe being swallowed whole, a little bit, but he didn't care because Sam's hand was suddenly palming his cock, roughly, and Sam _—Sam_ —was fucking loving it, was making these _noises_ , and rubbing against him, and Sam was hard, Dean could feel it, and _fuck_.

Sam pulled his hips back and reached for Dean's waist. His hands unfastened his belt and jeans, and Dean couldn't do anything but push up into them as they pulled everything down past his cock, jeans and boxers in one. He groaned as the air hit him, and he gripped at Sam's biceps, hard.

And then Sam's cock was out, too, somehow, and it was lined up against his, and Sam's stupidly huge fingers were wrapped around them _both_. Sam's hot, callused fingers were rubbing against one side of Dean's cock, and Sam's _cock_ , hot and heavy, was sliding against the other.

Sam's mouth was on Dean's neck and jaw, licking and sucking, leaving marks he didn't want to think about. Then Sam's mouth was back on his, hot and wet and insistent, and he pressed his tongue into Sam's mouth and canted his hips forward, thrusting into Sam's rough grip.

His fingers were in Sam's hair, fisting too tightly as his hips gained speed, and suddenly he was throwing his head back, knocking the wall, and _coming_ , his cock twitching against Sam's, his heart exploding and blood rushing through his ears.

There was a moment, some immeasurable amount of time later, as he started to come down and the fog in his brain had only just begun to clear, that Dean felt a surge of something unrecognizable in his chest. He wanted to laugh, and he wanted to cry at the same time, and he wanted—he didn't know what he wanted. Except.

_Sam_. Dean opened his eyes, and there was Sam. Standing over him, one hand on the wall over his shoulder, his breathing hard and jagged. He looked like he couldn't quite stand, like the arm over Dean's shoulder was the only thing keeping him upright, and he was staring at the floor.

Dean stared at him, and maybe Sam could feel it, because his gaze suddenly darted from side to side, and then up to Dean's face, just for a second. His eyes were wide and fearful, and they cut straight through Dean's chest, turning everything inside to ice.

He stared at Sam and— _oh my fucking God_ —his stomach dropped as the smell of burnt hair and sex filled his nose, clogging the air in this too-small apartment. He felt himself start to choke on it, and he couldn't breathe as he stared at Sam and guilt burned its way up his throat, almost all the way, and he was nearly sick all over this stranger's floor.

Dean closed his eyes and forced a couple of shallow breaths, as his head started to spin.

He swallowed and willed his hands to stop shaking as he grabbed at his jeans, hiked them up awkwardly, too quickly, and fumbled with his belt. He tried not to look at Sam's jeans hanging open— _Sam, fuck_.

Sam didn't move, didn't do himself up, didn't take his hand off the wall. He just stood, frozen except for his chest, which rose and fell with heavy breath, and his eyes, which flitted erratically from the floor to Dean's chest and back.

The smell of burnt hair and cooling sweat and drying come left Dean dizzy and nauseated, and the only thought he seemed capable of was _Get out here, get out of here now_ , so he pushed himself off the wall and ducked out from under Sam's arm, without touching him.

"Dean," Sam said, choked and horrible at Dean's back, but Dean couldn't look at him.

"Make sure this place is clean," Dean said, without turning around. "Then come back to the car." He yanked the apartment door open and thundered his way down the hall, and couldn't quite breathe until he was outside.

-=-=-=-=-=- 

Sam wanted to tell himself not to panic, but it wouldn't have worked, anyway.

He couldn't actually remember leaving Julia's apartment, couldn't remember if he had closed the bathroom window, locked the door behind him, or even double-checked that they'd burned all the hair. Dean had just left—of course he had fucking just left. What else would he do after being jacked off by his little brother? Kick back and share a beer?

Sam found himself outside, walking up and down crowded sidewalks, overhearing snatches of conversations—students fretting about papers, job applications, dorm dramas. He tried not to hate them and their simple fucking lives. He looked at them all and thought, _That could have been me._

Except part of him understood what a fallacy that was—he'd never had a chance of being like all those people. There was always a gap between them and the rest of the world. And there had always been a strange, tense line between him and Dean, the existence of which he'd been dutifully ignoring since puberty. Now that the line was crossed, he knew the truth better than ever: Winchesters lived on a different planet than everybody else.

Even as Sam's heart crashed in his chest, he couldn't help but ruefully note that he and Dean had managed to out-weird the supernatural case that brought them to this town in the first place.

Sam collapsed on a sidewalk bench, closed his eyes and tried to breathe, tried not to remember the feel of Dean underneath him, against him, his lips sliding wetly against Sam's, his cock between Sam's fingers, against Sam's cock. Dean had gripped Sam's arms so hard, he was pretty sure he'd find bruises there. If he could ever look at himself again.

His brain churned with images of the last couple of days. He tried to piece it all together. How had he let this happen? When did the world go crazy? Remembering Danny, that was part of it, sure. But it was more than that—it was Dean's reaction to everything. To Danny, to Shaheen, to Harvard. Sam wouldn't have guessed Dean would feel so... threatened. And Dean's hostility and fear and possessiveness, they all awakened something in Sam. It had outraged him that Dean didn't know how much Sam needed him. Wanted him.

_So I showed him._

Boy, had he ever shown him. In a language so blunt that even Dean couldn't pretend to misunderstand.

_Come back to the car_ , Dean had said, and Sam wanted to. He had already turned in the direction of the river thirteen or fourteen times, only to freeze when he tried to imagine what he was going to say, how he was even going to be able to look at Dean.

A sickening rush of terror ran through Sam. In Dean's place, he'd probably have left already, abandoning his crazy, sick brother to figure out his shit on his own. He could hear Dean now: _This is what a fucking Ivy League education gets you, huh? Well, don't sign me up._ He pictured Dean driving away, fleeing back toward the safety of demons he could track and kill.

Sam knew, of course, that Dean wouldn't do that. It was against Dean's biological imperative to abandon his baby brother, no matter how sick or crazy or completely out of control he got, except—

Except Dean had liked it.

Dean's body had responded to Sam's desire almost without question, and had—physically, at least— _wanted_ it. It was like their bodies already knew each other so well, knew what to do, how to move in time together...

And that was what scared Sam the most. He knew his brother's beautiful, fucked-up internal logic all too well. It was likely that Dean was currently figuring out a way to blame himself for the entire thing. Never mind that Sam had obviously started it. Never mind that Dean had been caught completely off-guard. Dean's fundamental need to protect Sam from _everything_ would kick in; he would convince himself that what Sam needed protecting from was _him_.

If there was any reason in the world that Dean would leave his brother, that was it.

Sam drew a shaky breath and fought with himself, fought with the need to get back to the car. He wanted to check that Dean was still here, waiting for him. He was afraid of what he might find.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Dean had been sitting in the car for hours. Literally, _hours_. He hadn't moved from the parking spot they'd found the day before—had it really only been the day before?—and hadn't started her up, not even for the radio. He'd just rolled down the windows and sat, watching the sun make its way from somewhere overhead down to the horizon before him, its warm, late afternoon rays glittering off the river, giving him a headache.

A motorcycle sped past him, and a car up ahead honked as the guy on the bike made a quick lane change, sliding close between cars. Dan shifted against the leather again and tried to relax. He tried to look like he was just taking a nap behind his sunglasses. He tried not to check the rearview mirror every three seconds to see if Sam had emerged from the campus yet, but he was mostly failing.

He sat and stared, and he thought about leaving. Or, rather, he thought about how he _should_ have been thinking about leaving. He wondered what Sam was doing—cleaning up the apartment, going to see Shaheen, just wandering around campus. He tried not to wonder if Sam was going to come back.

He tried not to be so completely, horribly unsure that Sam was even going to come meet him, and he tried to pick up his phone to call or text about a million times, but he didn't. He just sat there, listening to the grit of tire against asphalt as cars continued to stream past, some of them pounding with heavy bass lines. He caught snatches of public radio through open windows and more than one angry cell phone call. Pedestrians passed on the other side, some with their heads down, focused on wherever they were going, some just strolling, taking in the day and the sun and the school.

He sat there and thought about thinking about leaving Sam to this life, the life he could've had, should've had, if Dean had understood it, before, if Dean had fought a bit harder for him, if he had been a better hunter and hadn't needed Sam's help. The life in a world where Sam could be whoever he wanted, could afford a legitimate roof over his head, and wouldn't have to worry about his codependent fucking brother.

He closed his eyes and tried to shake the horribly selfish, sick feeling of how much he didn't actually want Sam to have any of that.

He thought about what had happened in that apartment, and he tried to decide which was worse: hating himself for letting it happen, or hating himself for wanting it to happen.

The smell of the river blew in with the breeze through the driver's side window, and Dean planned to start the engine and blow out of town the second Sam was back in the passenger seat. He had no idea what he'd do if Sam _didn't_ come back, and he didn't think about it.

An eighteen-wheeler rolled past, its axels squeaking and chassis rocking and exhaust stinking, and Dean stared at it, wondering where it had come from, where it was going, and how the hell it was going to get there in this stupid town. He watched it until it followed the road's bend behind the trees, and when he glanced back into his rearview mirror, Sam was there.

Sam was there, forty or so yards behind the car, trudging forward with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched and his bag hanging on his back, looking to all the world like just another student on his way home. Dean stared at Sam's approaching reflection and tried to breathe.

Sam opened the door and climbed into the car and slid into his seat without a word, keeping his eyes forward. Dean thought about his plan, how he was going to start the car and make a run for it as soon as Sam was safe inside, but he couldn't move. He was fucking terrified, he realized, suddenly more afraid than he could remember being in a very long time.

Sam cleared his throat. "I wasn't sure if you'd still be here," he said. Dean sucked in a breath and didn't know what to say.

"Thanks," Sam continued, staring at the dashboard.

Dean frowned. "For what?"

"For not—for still being here." Dean's jaw went tense as something flared in his gut—something like anger or relief or guilt, he couldn't tell the difference, anymore.

He swallowed and tried not to grind his teeth through the long, silent moment. His fingers twitched, like they knew it was time to go, but he still couldn't move to start the car.

"Dean?"

Dean stared down the sun-soaked road ahead of them for a long moment before he spoke. "You would've made a good lawyer, Sammy."

Sam turned to look at him. Dean could see his surprised eyes in his peripheral vision. "What?"

"You would have. You're smarter than all those assholes."

"Dean," Sam said uneasily.

"And I would've—I would've been proud of you." He paused, then shrugged. "Even if I never would've admitted it."

Sam stared at him from across the bench seat. "Thanks," he said, sounding like he was at a bit of a loss, but somehow amused despite himself.

He didn't say anything for a while after that, and they sat in awkward silence. Dean was itching to reach for the ignition, but he still couldn't. Sam kept opening his mouth, taking a breath like he was going to say something, but closing it before he did.

Until, finally, "You want to get out of here?", and Dean breathed with relief.

"Hell yeah, I do," he said, and started the car. He threw a glance over his shoulder and pulled out into the street, felt his body relax as Sam settled himself comfortably against the leather, and they were finally, _finally_ getting the hell out of Boston.

-=-=-=-=-=- 

"Dude, check it out," Dean called from his seat on the bed, pausing his channel surfing. " _Psycho_ 's on!"

" _Psycho_?" Sam said, scrubbing his wet hair dry as he stepped out of the bathroom, another towel wrapped around his waist. "Since when do you like Hitchcock?"

"What?" Dean said without looking at him; the glow from the TV gently lit his features. "Since always."

"Dean, I've known you almost your entire life. If you liked Hitchcock and I didn't know about it, it was when you were three years ol—"

"Hang on, hang on!" Dean interrupted, impervious (as always) to Sam-logic. "It's right at the end, Norman's about to get locked up."

Sam chuckled as his brother stared at the screen in rapt, somewhat beer-amplified attention. "By the way," Dean said, "did you see that guy at the bar, who looked _just_ like this dude? Had a totally creepy serial killer vibe about him. And I think he was eyeing you, Sammy."

"Nice, Dean."

"Thank God that's not our scene, man. Oh, hey, so are we going to go try to find the groundhog tomorrow?"

"Um, I don't know. I thought you wanted to leave for Knoxville first thing."

"Yeah, but that can wait a few hours. There's totally time to see the groundhog, Sammy, don't worry."

"Dean, I think you just need to admit that _you're_ the one who wants to meet the groundhog."

Dean frowned. "As if. Why would I want to go see some overgrown rodent?"

"Because he's cute, and you're still skeeved out from that thing with the witches. I think you want something nice to play with for a change."

Dean made a face. "Whatever. The witches are ganked, so I am no longer skeeved."

"It's OK, Dean," Sam said, crossing to the far corner where his duffle bag sat on a chair. After Boston (or 'A.B.' as he was already referring to it in his mind), it felt good to just play around. "You can admit it. I don't mind your fear of witches or your closet love for small, furry creatures."

Dean rolled his eyes, practically audibly, as Sam started shifting through the duffle. "Dude," he said, "maybe I'll hit the laundromat while you're out with your groundhog buddy, 'cause this is not a good scene." He frowned, dug a bit more through the bag, then looked around the floor in confusion. "Dean," he said, "have you seen my socks? I know I had a clean pair in here."

Dean didn't reply, and Sam felt the old irritation mounting. "Dammit, _dude_ , can't you just buy yourself some more fucking socks?" He turned around, ready to fight this issue to the death. But Dean wasn't looking at his face. Instead, his eyes were firmly fixed on Sam's towel, which had begun to slip around his hips. There was a pause—Sam might've described it as 'pregnant' if that wouldn't have been completely weird. Then Dean shook himself and focused, returning his gaze deliberately to the TV screen.

And he actually _blushed_.

Sam blinked.

_I made Dean blush_ , he thought. _Rather prettily... God help me if I ever say that out loud._

Something inside him burned, surprise coiling down into his gut, warm and pleasantly uncomfortable. Dean was clearly experiencing a more excruciating moment, so Sam turned away, giving them both a little space to breathe and collect themselves. He gathered up the clothes he had pulled from his duffle, stuffing them back inside, trying not to lose it all over again.

So much had changed in the last day. Familiar banter aside, Dean had experienced a major shift in the tectonic plates of his world. The rules had all changed. It was freeing. It was absolutely terrifying. What the hell must be going on his brother's head?

"We need more beer," Dean declared suddenly, vaulting up from the bed as if possessed. "I'll be right back."

Sam adjusted his towel. _Just... be calm. This will take time._ "Dean," he said patiently. "We haven't touched the twelve pack we picked up after the bar—which was your idea, by the way."

"Oh, right. Well. I'll just, um. Snacks. Do we need snacks?"

"Dean."

"I think we need snacks. I'll just run down to the gas station."

"Dean."

"Or magazines, or something."

"Dean. Stop." Dean stopped and just stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do with his hands or where to look. Sam took pity on him. "It's OK. Just. Grab me a beer, would you?"

Dean nodded and bee-lined for the fridge, where he stood, carefully examining its faded avocado green while Sam pulled on an old pair of track pants and a t-shirt. After glancing behind him to check that the coast was clear, Dean visibly relaxed and crossed over to Sam with two beers.

"So what's on now?" Sam asked, gesturing to the TV. He tried to communicate telepathically with Dean: _We can do this._  
  
"Um, _The Birds_ , I think," Dean answered.

"What's this, some kind of marathon?" _If anybody can pull this off, it's us. Right?_

"Guess so."

Sam hoped this meant _Yes._  
  
"Dean... how come you never told me about this thing you've got for Hitchcock?" Sam said as they settled into the two wooden chairs. He tried out a non-threatening smile.

Dean just shrugged. They watched in silence for a while. Sam fetched them another round and dimmed the harsh overhead light.

And finally, like a gradual change in the weather, Dean started to get excited, pointing out his favorite scenes, laughing at the fake-ass birds, and explaining to Sam why every character in the movie was an idiot.

Sam's mind drifted until one theme emerged clearly. _This is how it is for us. Nothing we do makes any sense. Never has, never will._ This was, if anything, a comforting thought.

And with that, Sam moved to the bed, sitting on the edge and then leaning down onto his back, sprawling out. Instantly, sleep began to tug at his senses. He resisted its pull, resting and waiting. He felt relaxed, like he could wait there forever if necessary.

But it didn't that long for Dean to follow.

He came over and sat down, right next to Sam's legs, without a word. Sam stared up at the back of his head for a minute or two before sliding his right thigh over a bit so that it touched Dean's. He pressed, gently, and heard Dean exhale. Sam's right hand found its way to Dean's back, the fingertips toying lightly with the hem of Dean's shirt, and he was glad he was a little drunk.

Sam sat up, slowly, so that his shoulder was pressed against Dean, too, and he concentrated on all the spots where their bodies touched almost completely from shoulder to knee. Dean's breath was a little too quick, a little too shallow, and his muscles were tense against Sam. But he didn't pull away.

Sam looked at him, his eyes catching on the curve of his ear, the flexing, twitching muscles of his jaw, the flutter of his eyelashes as his eyes darted around the room. He looked like he wanted to say something, but no words came.

"Dean," Sam said. Dean glanced sideways at Sam, involuntarily, and Sam watched this latest installment in his brother's epic battle with desire, fear, and the deep-seated need to _protect Sammy no matter what_. Sam leaned in, touched his forehead to Dean's temple, and his heart picked up speed as Dean pressed back into the touch—just a little, but enough.

"Dean, _please_ ," Sam said, and Dean shuddered and shook his head a little.

"Sammy," Dean whispered, sounding impossibly young. "Really?"

"Yes." Sam lifted his head, looking straight at Dean's profile. "Yes." Dean still wouldn't look at him, keeping his face forward and his eyes down. Sam couldn't let this go on.

" _Dean_ ," he said, packing it full of all the things Dean would never let him say out loud, and Dean must have heard it all, because he finally turned to look at Sam.

They kissed slowly, Sam taking the lead again, but giving Dean more space to react this time, to push and pull, to stop if he wanted to, but he didn't. Their lips met again and again, their tongues sliding against one another, and when Sam climbed over Dean's thighs, pressing a knee between his legs and pushing him down onto his back, he felt Dean's groan, hot and wet, in the crook of his neck.

It was the best sound he'd ever heard, and so he slid his knee back, letting his thigh lock firmly against Dean's groin, determined to hear it as many more times tonight as he possibly could.

-=-=-=-=-=- 

The sun was beating in through the driver's side window, too hot on Dean's arm as he eased down the highway. It was unseasonably warm everywhere, apparently, and he could almost feel the temperature rising with each southward mile they covered.

Sam was asleep, curled up awkwardly, but still somehow taking up more than half of the Impala's front seat. His head rested on a balled-up hoodie against the window, tilted to the side, exposing a long stretch of neck. Dean watched the sun and shadow play on the cords of Sam's neck for a moment, before turning his eyes back to the road before him.

He turned the music up a bit, careful not to wake Sam, but enough to distract himself from his thoughts.

Inevitably, though, his eyes wandered back to Sam: to the long fingers resting on his lap, to the curve of his biceps under his t-shirt sleeve, and then back to his neck. Sam shifted in his sleep, turning his head a little so that his hair slipped away from his ear, and Dean noticed a hickey just behind his earlobe.

Dean flushed and had to look away. A familiar sensation coiled in his stomach as he remembered giving Sam that hickey the night before. He swallowed and tried to focus on driving.

He wondered if, when they got to Knoxville, anyone would notice that mark on Sam, and if they would wonder whether Dean gave it to him. They wouldn't, he figured. He wasn't sure if he liked that or not.

Sam's phone chirped, announcing a text message. Dean glanced at Sam, but he didn't wake up. His phone had fallen out of his pocket and was resting in the crevice at the back of the seat. Dean reached for it and flipped it open.

It was from Shaheen. Dean tried to ignore the irrational flare of jealousy in his gut.

_dude, i think you guys did it!! fuckin' right, ghostbusters. don't be a stranger, man._

Dean held the phone open in his hand for a long minute as he turned his eyes back to the road, contemplating the 'delete' option on the phone.

The song on the radio changed, and Dean glanced back down long enough to navigate the menu and mark the text message as unread. Then he slipped Sam's phone back against the seat where it had fallen.

Ten minutes later, Sam woke up as Dean pulled into a gas station. "Already?" he muttered. "How long was I out?"

"We don't need gas, strictly speaking, but I'm hungry."

"Thought you wanted to wait for the Tennessee barbeque?"

"Dude, that's not for another, like, four hours at least," Dean scoffed, already climbing out the car. He filled the gas tank, anyway, because he hated the idea of his baby going hungry.

When he returned with a hot dog, chips, soda, and Twizzlers, Sam was checking his phone.

"I guess the accidents have stopped," Sam said. "Or at least, they've slowed back down to normal."

"'Course they have," Dean said smugly. "In case you've forgotten, Sam, we're awesome." Sam smirked. "I take it Shaheen dropped you a line?"

"Um, yeah," Sam said, glancing around like he wasn't quite sure if he should admit that.

Dean nodded. "You should keep in touch with him, Sam."

Sam looked at Dean, eyebrows raised. "Really?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "You never know when we might need a good attorney. Again. And he owes us."

Sam snorted and shoved his phone back into his pocket. It fell out, landing on the seat again, and Dean reached for it without really thinking about it.

"What are you—" Sam said as Dean pressed Sam's phone back into his pocket, all the way, and then let his thumb rub against the side seam of Sam's jeans for a moment too long. Sam took a quick breath, looking down at Dean's hand and then at Dean's face when he pulled his fingers away.

"Thanks," he said, fixing Dean with a look that shot straight through him, down to his cock, and Dean blinked.

"Be careful with that thing, would you?" he said, and Sam smiled. "And keep your grimy fingers off my Twizzlers, bitch. If you wanted something, you should've spoken up."

"Whatever. Jerk."

Dean stuck a rope of licorice in his mouth with a grin and eased back out onto the highway.

-=-=-=-=-=-

_End._

-=-=-=-=-=- 

Please leave [ **reallycorking** ](http://reallycorking.livejournal.com/) (aka [ **sleeper** ](http://sleeper.dreamwidth.org/)) feedback on her gorgeous art [here on DW](http://sleeper.dreamwidth.org/12355.html)!


End file.
